Remember that story you started last week? (Or maybe it was last month, or a few years ago.) We want to hear the rest of it. In fact, we would like to purchase a publication that contains it and read it in print. But you haven’t finished it, have you? That’s okay, I understand. I …
Category Archives: Encouragement
Watson Loves Me
Dr. Watson loves me. I know because he treats me so kindly, explains things so clearly, never sends a harsh word in my direction. I know because he’s willing to be vulnerable, to share his potentially embarrassing thoughts and feelings with me. He is a gentleman narrator; he is warm and welcoming; he takes me …
No Enterprise
Warning: This essay contains a very minor spoiler (not plot significant) for the third book in the Bloody Jack series. I’m in the movie theater watching Star Trek: Beyond. I haven’t gone in blind, and I’m finding much to complain about. But although my mind is churning on dialogue problems and weird plot choices, my …
We Welcome All Writing
At Write to the End, we do two main activities: We write, and we welcome all writing. These two activities are the foundation of our group. Welcome. I welcome you, and I welcome your writing. All of your writing, not just the parts you think are worth welcoming. I use Natalie Goldberg’s method of writing …
Don’t Show Your Work to Your Friends
What’s the right thing to say to someone who has just shown you a manuscript of the worst prose you’ve ever seen, which they say is a story, but you can hardly even find a character let alone discern a plot? Wait, I’ll make it worse: They’re looking at you expectantly, as innocent as a …
Colorless Green Ideas Crashed My Car
or
Your Right to Say Things that Don’t Make Sense
Syntax gives us the power to say things that don’t make sense: Ideas can’t have color (or crash a car), and something colorless can’t also be green, but I can say “colorless green ideas crashed my car,” and you can understand me, even if you’re quite not sure what I mean. The structure of a …
“I want these but don’t know how.”
What do you do with the pieces you don’t yet have the skill to finish? I used to leave them around in notebooks and never finish them. Half-abandoned, half-forgotten, they were a source of nebulous anxiety, though I vaguely planned to get back to them someday. Sometimes I’d remember one and think, “Hey, I know what …
How to Believe in Yourself
I got a fortune cookie last time that said “Believe in yourself and others will too.” That’s probably true, but it’s not very helpful as advice. Because if you don’t believe in yourself, how can you start? People who already believe in themselves will say, “Just do it. Just believe in yourself.” But this is …
Writing People Off
I don’t write people off. If you talk to me, I will encourage you to write. (Or I’ll encourage you to make art, or create smartphone apps, or start a business, or make whatever it is you want to make. But usually the people I meet want to write.) But if I were the kind of …
Prove Me Wrong
I met a lady at a class one time, and we ended up staying after to talk about her novel idea. Her idea was great. Her material was fascinating historical novel stuff, with current socially relevant themes, compelling characters and situations, dramatic, literary — a book I want to read. But I found myself bored …