Getting Inspired

My own edited highlights from "Robert's Rules of Writing"

The hard part of writing isn't scribbling words on a page. The hard part is scribbling words that mean something.

Writing has to have a purpose.

Writing to a friend will remind you that there are nice folks out there.

You're writing to interest and even entertain the friend. And, secretly, you're looking forward to the reaction your words are going to get.

The voice you write in is the voice your reader hears and, ideally, grows to trust.

Pay attention to what's playing in your head at any time of the day, and don't be so quick to dismiss it.

It's in my own little office that the actual writing gets done. In solitude. In silence. And no living witnesses to the act of creation.

Sometimes you'll feel inspired when you sit down to write - and sometimes you won't. But sit down you must, and write you will. The muse is most effectively summoned by the clicking of your keyboard or the scratching of your pen. She is irresistibly drawn to the aroma of hard work.

Don't be afraid to tell us, with all your powers of description and even a bit of attitude, about an atmosphere, a landscape, about what's going on in a character's mind or in the larger world of your story.

It's the voice you use, as an author, to whisper directly into your reader's ear.

Stop reading. The last thing you want to do is start filling your head with other people's prose. In fact, the better the writer you might be reading, the more danger you're in.

Take a look at your bedside table and tell me what is sitting there.

Chances are, whatever kind of book is sitting on your bedside table is the kind of book you should be writing yourself.

Successful writing is writing done with conviction. It's writing in which the author was truly invested.

If there's one thing you want your readers to do, it's worry.

Your mission is to keep your readers guessing.

The essence of any story is obstacles and - yes, you've heard this a million times - conflict.

Your readers want to see, even savor, the struggle.

Does that mean your story has to end happily? Absolutely not.

If it's nonfiction, ask yourself if you've established all the things you need to, and in the order they had to come.

It's a very good idea to wait - just a little - before submitting it anywhere.

The word "said" is an honorable one.

Your pen can take your audience anywhere you please, but sometimes they'll be perfectly happy to just hang around the house with you.

That, he said as if it were easy, is all you have to do. Create characters your readers care so deeply about that anything that happens to them matters.

Drama is generated when those characters we care about must struggle to get what they want.

A good hero or heroine is flawed. He has some failings, some things in his nature that aren't so admirable or likable. Maybe your character, though essentially good-hearted, was brought up in a benighted home, where brutality was a given; maybe some of that rubbed off.

The great villians...lend weight and power and meaning to the story. Villians are fun to write. To write these bad guys you are going to have to get in touch with your dark side - which for many writers, isn't easy.

The most dangerous thing you can do is worry too much about a silly old thing like the truth.

Your first allegiance is not to the truth but to your audience.

Writing is an act of distillation.

All art is a lie.

Writing long is easy because you're not really doing one of the hardest things about writing - which is editing as you go.

Try thinking, specifically, of your characters, not your plot...focus on the people involved.

Plot is really nothing more than credible characters bumping up against each other.

Always arrive late and leave early.

When the point has been made or the punch line delivered, do not hang around. Anything else you say at this point can only weaken what came before.

If all that's happening in your scene is what's happening in your scene, then it probably isn't earning it's keep.

You want to invest the scene with some subtext, an emotional or thematic burden.

Be a tease. Suspense is a necessary component of any writing.

You have to believe- in yourself, your work, your mission.

The baser instincts should never be underestimated as a spur to higher things.

As long as you're alive, you're accumulating new material all the time. Not to mention perspective, insight, understanding. (You'll note that I don't say you behave any better; I do say that you might have a better notion of why you misbehave- and that's something.

Our best stuff gets even better, and the more we use of it, the more we seem to have.

If it's a think piece for the newspaper, you're promising to deliver a cogent argument, one that opens their minds to new possibilities.

In return for the reader's time and attention, you are offering entertainment. (Are you happy right now?)

Achievement is the one thing that trumps depression, every time.

When a new form beckons to you, when you feel that tingle of excitement, mixed with trepidation, which comes from accepting a challenge, rise to it-don't run away.

Before embarking on any substantial writing project, ask yourself this: Am I in Love? (what, with a blog?)

And you will subscribe, as you must, to the theory of delayed gratification.

When you're really planning to whale away, the first person is your ticket. It's the closest you'll get to your own voice.

That's probably why a lot of antiheroes use it; it's hard for the reader to hate someone who's been whispering so openly and confidingly in his ear.

Many times, all a piece of nonfiction writing needs to jazz it up is a loud, strong intrusion from the writer herself! What were your personal feelings about your subject? What surprised you, bothered you, pleased you...personally?

Writers have to be voyeurs and eavesdroppers.

They have to understand the nuances, the elisions, the confessions and confusions that make life the unpredictable mess it is.

When interviewing people, you have to be as alive to their expressions, their gestures, their general deportment as you are to the words your tape recorder is capturing.

To write well, about anything, you must have curiousity in your nature. To write well about people or characters, you have to be downright shameless.

Another thing writers should be is gossips.

Gossip is the unofficial version of events; it's the private face of public affairs. Gossip fills in all the gaps, explains all the motivations, charts all the currents. It's the common coin of human commerce, and no writer can ever have enough of it.

We learn about people from other people, from talking to them, swapping stories and opinions, jokes and observations.

As writers, we're always trying to decide if we're crazy or not. p. 62

More later...