Monday Motivation

Good Monday Morning

I'm not sure why, but this advice hit home today.

Hilary Mantel, winner in 2012 for Bring Up the Bodies and in 2009 for Wolf Hall.











“Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction. When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that’s the point to step back and fill in the details of their world. People don’t notice their everyday surroundings and daily routine, so when writers describe them it can sound as if they’re trying too hard to instruct the reader.”

Good Monday morning!

Ah! Monday. When the week starts out fresh, you're not behind on your to-do list yet and pumpkin spice bagels are in the stores. :)  Hopefully, you find yourself writing today!

Today I present 10 rules on writing from Teju Cole. Follow the link for more!

1. There are few things more resistant to tutoring than the creative arts. All artists are after that thing that resists expression.
2. Keep it simple. There are many who use big words to mask the poverty of their ideas. A straightforward vocabulary, using mostly ordinary words, spiced every now and again with an unusual one, persuades the reader that you’re in control of your language.
3. Remove all clichés from your writing. Spare not a single one. The cliché is an element of herd thinking, and writers should be solitary animals. We do our work always in the shadow of herd thinking. Be expansive in your descriptions. Dare to bore.
4. Avoid adverbs. Let the nouns, adjectives and verbs carry the action of the story.
5. When reporting speech, it is enough to say “she said” or “he said.” You must leave “he chortled,” “she muttered,” “I shouted,” and other such phrases to writers of genre fiction.
6. Aim for a transparent style so that the story you’re telling is that much more forceful.
7. Read more than you write. In expressing the ambition to be a writer, you are committing yourself to the community of other writers.
8. Your originality will mean nothing unless you can understand the originality of others. What we call originality is little more than the fine blending of influences.
9. Be ruthless in your use of what you’ve seen and what you’ve experienced. Add your imagination, so that where invention ends and reality begins is undetectable.
10. Be courageous. Nothing human should be far from you.

Good Monday morning!

Ah! Monday. Where the week starts out fresh, you're not behind on your to-do list yet and pumpkin spice bagels are in the stores. :)  Hopefully, you find yourself writing today!


Today, I present 8 Tips on how to write a great story from Kurt Vonnegut.

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.