Whilst away I finally finished both Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, so to make up for the lack of updates, I will post a review for each in the coming days. Right now I am reading Night Train To Lisbon by Pascal Mercier and it has come of to a good start, when I’m done I will review it as well.

And finally, may I just add how much I missed my piano? The first thing I did as soon as I was back home was to delight the walls with the touch of my stiff fingers to the piano keys. Tomorrow I will play some more.

Cheers.

If you like to plan before you write, then stick to that every time. Once you start writing you have to stop planning, and if you think youm left something out, you can always edit your work at the end.

If you are not much of  a planner then just go with the flow, stick pen to paper and go along. You’ll be surprised how great some unplanned texts can be.

You don’t have to use everything you wrote. Sometimes you’ll get a fantastic text with some paragraphs that show as evident intruders, delete them and move on.

If you get any thoughts of a spinoff, don’t abandon your original story, stick to it and save the other idea for later. If you think they could contrast well, then you can always merge them later. Don’t digress.

Don’t worry too much about grammar and spelling. That is what revision is for (once you are done).

I hope you find something in here to your use, cheers.

Trying too hard can be done in many ways. Maybe you use too much jargon, or you use too many adjectives. It may also have no reflection whatsoever in the words themselves. Maybe it takes you a very long time to finish a story because you revise it too much, or you are too ambitious and are not happy with the result. Whichever you are doing, or none, these tips may be of help:

Keep your choice of words simple, or at least, use words you use on a daily basis (unless too coloquial). Don’t try to impress your readers with your awesome knowledge of vocabulary, they may very well end up hating you for it.

Don’t overdescribe. It is always fantastic for a reader when they can see the characters or the landscapes you talk about, but sometimes writers get so carried away that they forget about the story they are supposed to tell. What’s more, descriptions may bore if they get too long, or the reader may get lost in the storm of adjectives.

Be careful not to be too ambitious with your story. It is just not possible to write something evey critic in the world will love, so relax, and keep it simple. Write something you would read and forget about the rest (this only applies to creative writing, not to academic papers).

When you revise, do make sure there aren’t any mistakes, but try to keep the changes to the storyline or to the basic structure of sentences, paragraphs, and even chapters, to a minimum. Otherwise, you might end up caught in a vortex of fresh ideas you can apply. Remember, revising too much is exactly how you erase your soul’s esscence from your work.

And the most important, always hold in the highest regard everything you write. Don’t worry it’s not good enough or if anyone will like it, have faith in your soul. Worrying is just another path to over revising, and it is also stressful, so stop, breathe, and write.

Cheers

Get down to it. It is very common to say you want to write and then do nothing, or begin to write without having your mind really set on it. Choose a time, sit down, and focus.

Think as you write. Stop thinking about what to write and get down to it. Spinning your ideas in your head will do nothing but give you a headache, find an idea to develop and then let the words flow.

Get rid of all distractions. If you are working on a computer, close all those other windows, all they do is make your attention wander. If you prefer working on a notebook, then get away from your computer and from your cellphone, immediately.

Use what you want if it helps to focus. Maybe music, maybe tea, maybe even the noise at the local Starbucks. If you find it helps get the train of thought rolling, use it. You can also use differnet elements for different paces. If you are writting a page turner, then maybe some coffee and a steady beat will do the trick, of you want to write something calmer, then you can always play classical music and drink a soothing cup of green tea.

That is all for today, hope something out of here actually helps. Cheers.

Now, I’m no expert. I have no published works nor any recognition outside the people who know me, but I have written a lot and, in doing so, I have gained a slight idea of what makes words flow. So if you wish to hear one simple man’s opinion, read my next post. Cheers.

In other news, my writing is going well. Yesterday I wrote well into the night, and today I wrote some more. There is some editing necessary but my project is going well, and I have produced a couple of shorts as well. They might come in handy sometime.

Cheers.

That is the beginning of the project I am working on right now. I have been writing a lot about it in the past month, and have surpassed the 30 page mark of revised work. And there is more underway. Today I wrote a lot, edited even more, and some changes were just what was necessary to provide freshness to the story. I can only hope I can maintain this rythm and maybe then I will have a completed project, at last.

Cheers.

On Chesil Beach is a novel shortlisted for the Booker Prize. I read some reviews about it and one compared it to Jon McGregor’s If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things (my choice for best book from the past decade) which got me realy exited about it, even if the same review said that McGregor’s was much better. Another review about it, a positive review, mentioned that “It is all so terribly sad but so believable that there are surely lessons for us all here,” which made my interest peak.

The book itself is about, as the website of Waterstone’s put it, “how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken,” and it reflects this by telling the story of Edward and Florence, an old fashioned couple who get married on Chesil Beach, and unable to discuss their anxieties about the wedding night, which will end p affecting them for the rest of their lives.

So, as soon as I am done with Outliers, my next date will be with On Chesil Beach. Cheers.

Last night, I danced, which is rather unusual, and today morning, as soon as  I arrived from celebrating the New Year, I didn’t go to sleep, I booted on my computer and wrote for hours. And when my sight got tired, I continued writing on my notebook before snaching a few hours of sleep. I have played the piano, read and cooked and rested as well throughout the day, all in the purpose of starting the decade as I wish to spend it, writing , reading and playing piano and resting, improving my cooking and dancing skills wouldn’t hurt either.

So to everyone, I say this, Happy New Year! Happy New Decade!

When I was a young man, well, younger still than I am now, I wasn’t used to listening to music. Sure I listened to the radio from time to time, and there were a couple of songs that I liked, but I didn’t have any favourite bands, and I knew only a handful by name. There were no songs I had learnt by heart, I did not have any CDs that I could call my own, and I had never downloaded a song.

And then the year 2005 came along, and with it, the movie Sin City, which I grew to like quite a bit. One day, I was watching videos over at YouTube and I stumbled upon the trailer, and I discovered that the trailer music made something inside mi tick. Another video about the same movie used the same song – an instrumental version of Cells by The Servant – so I checked the comments and found its name. For the first time, there was a song I wanted to download. Soon I had that song, both in instrumental and regular versions, and then other songs by The Servant, and later on by other bands as well.

All of a sudden, I had become an alternative rock junkie, and all because of one song. A song that, even without all this meaning, would still top my list of favourite songs. A song by a band high up there in my list too.

So I raise my glass to Cells and to the former band The Servant, and to their then front man, Dan Black. Cheers!