I'm sure I can't be the only one who feels that the new year really begins in September - the shops are full of Back to School stuff, the days are a little shorter, a little chillier and we all feel fairly rested and ready for new challenges.
So, as the new year is only a few days away I'm making some changes around here as I've spent the summer writing and 'consolidating my career' (I've sent out lots of emails). The first change I'm making is to open up this blog more - it began for me as somewhere to put down a few thoughts, the occasional short story, Question of the Week post, bits and pieces really - since I've jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon I realise how much I've been underusing my web presence (see, I've even paid attention to some of the web marketing spam!). Here's my list of resolutions...
- This blog will now be clearly linked to my Twitter account - I'll stick a wiget thing on it
- If you write a blog that is particularly concerned with writing or publishing (especially if you're in the UK) then please send me a link and I'll post it up here
- I will try to post something worthwhile for writers (and readers) each week - that's going to be the hardest resolution to keep once the University term begins
- If you'd like to write a guest post on here (especially when I'm snowed under with undergraduate essays to mark!) then let me know
Ummm....that's all I can think of for now, if you have any other suggestions do get in touch.
Wednesday 26 August 2009
Tuesday 25 August 2009
"Once Upon a Time...Artists and Storytelling" Embankment Galleries, Somerset House 26 June - 26 July 2009
One of my favourite childhood memories is lying on my stomach in the local public library reading The Orange Fairy Book by Andrew Lang - I'm still searching for a copy of that book even now, it was large in my eight year old hands and had an orange cloth binding - just the thought of that book and I'm back there deep within the worlds created by the Grimms, Perrault, and the Arabian nights. So when I saw that the Courtauld Institute had an exhibition on in the Embankment Galleries called 'Once Upon a Time...' I wanted to go. The exhibition was the culmination of the year long MA Curating the Art Museum course at The Courtauld and therefore jointly curated by those students led by Martin Caiger-Smith who was previously Acting Director at the Hayward Gallery. Artists have told stories ever since there have been stories to tell and artists to depict them and the first section of the show, Childhood Stories, about the link between illustration and text show was the personal equivalent to Lascaux cave paintings
- the earliest attempt to make sense of the world around us based upon Snow White and Cinderella rather than the caveman's woolly mamoth. While not particularly groaning with Fine Art as such - although some particularly fine Paula Rego illustrations feature - the familiar Victorian Cruikshank and Crane prints of Beauty and the Beast, Jack and the Beanstalk, Three Blind Mice and so on, lulls the audience into a cosy rememberance of times past and in fact a quick glance around at my fellow visitors to the exhibition on a wet Wednesday afternoon confirmed this - plenty of nostalgic smiles and contented sighs. Personally I would have loved to have seen a few Ladybird book illustrations in there too - my version of Snow White was Eric Winter's,
not Walt Disney's. However, one of the strengths of this section of the exhibition was that the dark and almost gothic side to our childhood tales was emphasised instead of the ubiquitous cartoon versions.And like all good fairytales and stories the exhibition took a turn to even darker things...the second section of the exhibition was devoted to personal mythologies. Rather than taking an obvious line and showing some William Blake drawings, the MA curators had chosen Twentieth century prints and contemporary video works. Oskar Kokoschka prints waited in atmospheric subdued lighting alongside the dark curtained doorways to Tracey Emin and Gillian Wearing videos.
Tracey Emin's film Why I didn't become a dancer brought up memories of Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes very strongly - this piece from 1995 is so much more than just Tracey from Margate telling us about her crap childhood as if she was on television with Jeremy Kyle. Unlike the fairytale Emin has built a successful career on her lack of vanity and a strong personal mythology which finds itself deeply rooted in our celebrity culture - Tracey as Cinderella.
Part of that same conversation is Gillian Wearing's Confessions which really does tread the same ground as Jeremy Kyle and Jerry Springer but with ridiculous disguises that remind one of the Channel 4 comedy show Bo' Selecta. The interesting thing about all these television resonances is that Wearing's piece - fully titled Confess all on video. Don't worry, you will be in disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian dates from 1994 so this is a true case of life (or television) reflecting art.
Kokoschka, Emin and Wearing are also part of the same conversation that Sartre championed in Being and Nothingness and that politicians, actors, pop stars and even shop assistants all buy into; that our past is what we make it and truth doesn't have to feature in that. The exhibition makes a strong case for our past as story, our lives as story and art to make sense of our lives and ourselves. Intriguingly all the curators of Once Upon a Time... are women and so often, certainly in Western tradition, women were the storytellers - Mother Goose and the Wise Woman. This exhibition scratches the surface of a fascinating discussion which certainly continued for me as I went home to get out my copy of Marina Warner's From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber a wet afternoon in a gallery started out with me enjoying childhood memories and ended with dark thoughts about blood and beasts, just like all the best afternoons.
Thursday 20 August 2009
The Job of Writing Poetry
I'm mother to twin boys, I do a bit of teaching at a local university in the English department and this coming academic year the Art department too. I'm hoping to start studying for a PhD soon on the links between art and poetry. I also do a bit of freelance writing for magazines and I write poetry, some of which gets published.
In short, I'm a busy person, especially if you factor in my Twitter/Facebook/b3ta habit, reading approximately one novel a week, cooking and gardening too.
I find that I do most of my writing - the poetry and the occasional short story/half written novel - during the university vacations when I have no other demands upon my time except family ones. My children know that during the school holidays they can stay up a little later and they can laze around in bed until 10am if they fancy because I'll be writing until about lunchtime and then the afternoon and evenings are theirs.
So all of this means that writing poetry in particular tends to be done in these splurges and because of all the rest of the stuff I need to get done I have to be organised about redrafting and submitting work otherwise it would all simply sit in the virtual dusty drawer of my Documents folder on my laptop. How I organise this may be of some help to you...if you're not organised properly for writing you're not treating it like the job that it is!
Here's how I do it....
First Drafts and 'The Muse'
I don't believe in this notion of 'The Muse' and waiting for it to strike, some people (even some published writers) that I know do go along with the idea that they'll only write poetry when they get the feeling that it's about to strike. They're the lucky ones - that doesn't happen for me and if it did I have a feeling my Muse would strike at 3.00am and I hate having a broken night's sleep.
I try to write to a routine. I aim at sitting down every day Monday to Friday from about 9.00am until at least lunchtime and writing/editing/submitting - doing all the stuff that's involved in my job - the job of being a writer/academic/mother/dogsbody! Some days and some weeks I write every day, other times I might spend a week or two sorting out lecture plans, magazine submissions, job applications or even - and this is a guilty secret - watching YouTube and reading junk online - I feel bad about those days even though those are the times when my subconscious is probably working really hard at a new poem....okay, I don't really believe that either, but hey, I'm human.
I also go out and write because then I don't get distracted by the internet, newspapers, the internet, gardening, the internet, cats and the internet. Cafes work best for me because I can watch the world go by wrapped up in my cocoon of caffeine and there's something very special about writing longhand in a nice notebook.
So, what do I do once I've got all these First Drafts?
The Redrafting Filing System
Everything I write gets typed up either straight into Word, or more recently I've been using Evernote - it's free and you can save your work both on a laptop/pc and online and synchronise the two together to keep it all up to date. It also takes screen clippings from sites so you can keep all your research together too.
I then put this first draft into a folder marked redraft for two months time e.g. REDRAFT OCTOBER 2009 - everything I write this month, August, will go into that folder and I won't look at it again until October. I always like to leave at least six weeks to two months before revisiting a piece because I will have almost forgotten it and that gives me some distance and I'm more able to be subjective about it - I won't feel bad about cutting out all of my 'darlings'.
I've redrafted the poem, what next?
Where to submit poetry
The best thing any writer can do before beginning to write, let alone submit work, is to READ. If you want to write poetry then read poetry - I read somewhere that there are huge numbers of people writing poetry in the UK and the rest of the world but there aren't huge numbers of people reading poetry...strange...That's a bit like a rock band saying they never listened to music.
Once you're reading lots of poetry you'll have some idea of where you'd like your work to end up that's because you'll want to know more about your favourite poet and you'll Google them or find them on Poem Hunter (I'm on there!) and soon discover which magazines published their work. In addition to that you can look at the excellent lists at the Poetry Library's site or sign up to a writers' newsletter like Writer's Relief which will send you a list of calls for submission every month along with hints and tips for writers.
These are just a few ways you can find out where to place your work. Don't forget that it is easy to get work published online with plenty of obscure websites - anyone can set up a site and put whatever they like on there, that's the beauty of the internet - but if you want to build a good reputation for yourself and to be taken seriously as a professional then you have to keep to the professional sites. That's not to say that a new online poetry magazine isn't worth submitting to, but just make sure that it's the sort of place you'll be proud to be a part of in the future.
Don't ever pay to have your work read - if it's good enough for a reputable magazine to accept then they will not charge you a reading fee. Most magazines sadly won't be able to pay you for your submission - if you want to make money from writing you'd be far better off going into journalism. Magazines will often send you a free copy of the edition in which you've appeared. The only time you're likely to spend more than just the postage fee is if you're entering a competition - that's how most poetry competitions are run - the winner(s) get a cash prize or published copies of their work.
You've selected some likely magazines, what now?
First of all read the submission guidelines - you won't even make it to the long list if you've formatted your work incorrectly, emailed it as an attachment when they've asked for work to be in the body, sent it to the wrong person, sent free verse to a sonnet magazine and so on.
Secondly read the submission guidelines again and make sure you've complied with all their demands - this is very important.
Then write your covering letter - make it simple and to the point, remember to be polite because good manners cost nothing and you never know when you might meet this person in the flesh at a literary festival, book launch, writers' workshop or even in the pub.
If you're sending something via snailmail then make sure you include a stamped self-addressed envelope so they can either return your work, send you a rejection letter or even an acceptance letter! Remember though that you'll probably send out at least ten to twenty submissions for every single acceptance, if you're lucky.
How to keep track of all your submissions
This is the bit that I really wanted to write about - the whole reason for this post! Most poetry magazines accept and encourage simultaneous submissions - this is where you have a poem that you send to four or five magazines at the same time. If one magazine accepts it you then contact the others and ask for it to be withdrawn from you submission explaining why. Magazines do not encourage multiple submissions - this is where you send one or more poems every week without fail - that's the work of a stalker not a poet. Bundle up your submissions and send one containing up to five or six poems (depending on the magazine guidelines) and if they are all rejected or accepted you still wait a reasonable amount of time before submitting again - this is also usually mentioned in the magazine guidelines.
Once I've received a rejection or acceptance from a magazine I do two things: first I re-read the rejected poems and see if I think it needs rewriting, tightening up or 'rested' (in the dustbin), secondly, if I think it's still a piece that works, I get it straight out to another magazine.
I use an Excel spreadsheet for listing all my poetry ready for submission and all the magazines where they've been submitted.
Each poem submitted gets a date - month and year when it was sent off and where, once I get a reply the date is either changed to red - rejection, or moved onto another spreadsheet. I keep a separate spreadsheet for all the successful pieces as once they've been published they can't be sent off to another magazine generally. The screenshot above is for my current poems awaiting acceptance - I've taken out the titles of both poems and journals. I also put in a hyperlink from Excel straight to the journal website and also to the document folder where the poem is saved.
This works for me and gives me something practical to do once I receive a rejection. Of course I spend a bit of time moaning about it and feeling down but if you want to be in print you have to be like a cowboy - grow a thick skin - it comes in handy for all those times you have to get back up on the horse!
In short, I'm a busy person, especially if you factor in my Twitter/Facebook/b3ta habit, reading approximately one novel a week, cooking and gardening too.
I find that I do most of my writing - the poetry and the occasional short story/half written novel - during the university vacations when I have no other demands upon my time except family ones. My children know that during the school holidays they can stay up a little later and they can laze around in bed until 10am if they fancy because I'll be writing until about lunchtime and then the afternoon and evenings are theirs.
So all of this means that writing poetry in particular tends to be done in these splurges and because of all the rest of the stuff I need to get done I have to be organised about redrafting and submitting work otherwise it would all simply sit in the virtual dusty drawer of my Documents folder on my laptop. How I organise this may be of some help to you...if you're not organised properly for writing you're not treating it like the job that it is!
Here's how I do it....
First Drafts and 'The Muse'
I don't believe in this notion of 'The Muse' and waiting for it to strike, some people (even some published writers) that I know do go along with the idea that they'll only write poetry when they get the feeling that it's about to strike. They're the lucky ones - that doesn't happen for me and if it did I have a feeling my Muse would strike at 3.00am and I hate having a broken night's sleep.
I try to write to a routine. I aim at sitting down every day Monday to Friday from about 9.00am until at least lunchtime and writing/editing/submitting - doing all the stuff that's involved in my job - the job of being a writer/academic/mother/dogsbody! Some days and some weeks I write every day, other times I might spend a week or two sorting out lecture plans, magazine submissions, job applications or even - and this is a guilty secret - watching YouTube and reading junk online - I feel bad about those days even though those are the times when my subconscious is probably working really hard at a new poem....okay, I don't really believe that either, but hey, I'm human.
I also go out and write because then I don't get distracted by the internet, newspapers, the internet, gardening, the internet, cats and the internet. Cafes work best for me because I can watch the world go by wrapped up in my cocoon of caffeine and there's something very special about writing longhand in a nice notebook.
So, what do I do once I've got all these First Drafts?
The Redrafting Filing System
Everything I write gets typed up either straight into Word, or more recently I've been using Evernote - it's free and you can save your work both on a laptop/pc and online and synchronise the two together to keep it all up to date. It also takes screen clippings from sites so you can keep all your research together too.
I then put this first draft into a folder marked redraft for two months time e.g. REDRAFT OCTOBER 2009 - everything I write this month, August, will go into that folder and I won't look at it again until October. I always like to leave at least six weeks to two months before revisiting a piece because I will have almost forgotten it and that gives me some distance and I'm more able to be subjective about it - I won't feel bad about cutting out all of my 'darlings'.
I've redrafted the poem, what next?
Where to submit poetry
The best thing any writer can do before beginning to write, let alone submit work, is to READ. If you want to write poetry then read poetry - I read somewhere that there are huge numbers of people writing poetry in the UK and the rest of the world but there aren't huge numbers of people reading poetry...strange...That's a bit like a rock band saying they never listened to music.
Once you're reading lots of poetry you'll have some idea of where you'd like your work to end up that's because you'll want to know more about your favourite poet and you'll Google them or find them on Poem Hunter (I'm on there!) and soon discover which magazines published their work. In addition to that you can look at the excellent lists at the Poetry Library's site or sign up to a writers' newsletter like Writer's Relief which will send you a list of calls for submission every month along with hints and tips for writers.
These are just a few ways you can find out where to place your work. Don't forget that it is easy to get work published online with plenty of obscure websites - anyone can set up a site and put whatever they like on there, that's the beauty of the internet - but if you want to build a good reputation for yourself and to be taken seriously as a professional then you have to keep to the professional sites. That's not to say that a new online poetry magazine isn't worth submitting to, but just make sure that it's the sort of place you'll be proud to be a part of in the future.
Don't ever pay to have your work read - if it's good enough for a reputable magazine to accept then they will not charge you a reading fee. Most magazines sadly won't be able to pay you for your submission - if you want to make money from writing you'd be far better off going into journalism. Magazines will often send you a free copy of the edition in which you've appeared. The only time you're likely to spend more than just the postage fee is if you're entering a competition - that's how most poetry competitions are run - the winner(s) get a cash prize or published copies of their work.
You've selected some likely magazines, what now?
First of all read the submission guidelines - you won't even make it to the long list if you've formatted your work incorrectly, emailed it as an attachment when they've asked for work to be in the body, sent it to the wrong person, sent free verse to a sonnet magazine and so on.
Secondly read the submission guidelines again and make sure you've complied with all their demands - this is very important.
Then write your covering letter - make it simple and to the point, remember to be polite because good manners cost nothing and you never know when you might meet this person in the flesh at a literary festival, book launch, writers' workshop or even in the pub.
If you're sending something via snailmail then make sure you include a stamped self-addressed envelope so they can either return your work, send you a rejection letter or even an acceptance letter! Remember though that you'll probably send out at least ten to twenty submissions for every single acceptance, if you're lucky.
How to keep track of all your submissions
This is the bit that I really wanted to write about - the whole reason for this post! Most poetry magazines accept and encourage simultaneous submissions - this is where you have a poem that you send to four or five magazines at the same time. If one magazine accepts it you then contact the others and ask for it to be withdrawn from you submission explaining why. Magazines do not encourage multiple submissions - this is where you send one or more poems every week without fail - that's the work of a stalker not a poet. Bundle up your submissions and send one containing up to five or six poems (depending on the magazine guidelines) and if they are all rejected or accepted you still wait a reasonable amount of time before submitting again - this is also usually mentioned in the magazine guidelines.
Once I've received a rejection or acceptance from a magazine I do two things: first I re-read the rejected poems and see if I think it needs rewriting, tightening up or 'rested' (in the dustbin), secondly, if I think it's still a piece that works, I get it straight out to another magazine.
I use an Excel spreadsheet for listing all my poetry ready for submission and all the magazines where they've been submitted.
Each poem submitted gets a date - month and year when it was sent off and where, once I get a reply the date is either changed to red - rejection, or moved onto another spreadsheet. I keep a separate spreadsheet for all the successful pieces as once they've been published they can't be sent off to another magazine generally. The screenshot above is for my current poems awaiting acceptance - I've taken out the titles of both poems and journals. I also put in a hyperlink from Excel straight to the journal website and also to the document folder where the poem is saved.This works for me and gives me something practical to do once I receive a rejection. Of course I spend a bit of time moaning about it and feeling down but if you want to be in print you have to be like a cowboy - grow a thick skin - it comes in handy for all those times you have to get back up on the horse!
Wednesday 19 August 2009
Developing confidence as a writer
I've been writing professionally for about three and a half years now and it's only very, very recently that I've developed confidence in my writing to believe what we're all told - that editors turn your writing down sometimes not because it's necessarily bad but because sometimes it's just not what they're looking for.
Writing for Magazines
I've done a bit of this - I had a regular column in a national magazine for three years and because I found it fairly easy to write I didn't always see any value in it. I truly believed that if something is worth doing it should be hard to do it well.
That's simply not true.
Some things are easier for me because I'm good at them - as writers we should print this out and pin it up somewhere!
That said, just because you're good at something it doesn't mean you shouldn't practise it and try to get even better!
Today I'm taking the athlete Usain Bolt as a case in point - he was the fastest man in the world last month yet last week yet he went out and beat his own record. I'm sure if that had been me I would have simply dined out on the first record...well, for at least a few months.
As everyone knows - you're only as good at the last one. Bolt knows that he's only as good as that last record, and what a record! Writers, poets, musicians, artists, we're all only as good as our last piece so we owe it to ourselves to keep writing, keep practising and keep getting better.
How do you get better?
Keep reading, keep writing and keep learning with an open mind, it's as simple as that. The more good quality writing your read the more you'll absorb and then begin to produce good writing yourself. A good writer is always a reader first.
Okay so preaching over for a while.
The reason I think I've become more confident is because I believe in what I've written. I believe it's clear, concise and sounds like me, it's not me trying to fit with some style I think I should be following. I've read a few blogs recently that advise just this - write in the style that suits you - if you're a crime writer or a romance writer, write that! That's not to say you shouldn't try your hand at expanding your repertoire and improving your writing but don't turn your back on what you find easy just because you think it should be difficult.
In writing this blog post I've also realised something for myself....I don't like the standard bookmarks feature in Firefox (which I use)and I need to find something easy to use to collect up all those excellent blogs that I've read so I can share them with a wider audience. There is a wealth of knowledge out there and I'm losing a good deal of it by not cataloguing it properly.
Hmm...something for me to work on next.
Writing for Magazines
I've done a bit of this - I had a regular column in a national magazine for three years and because I found it fairly easy to write I didn't always see any value in it. I truly believed that if something is worth doing it should be hard to do it well.
That's simply not true.
Some things are easier for me because I'm good at them - as writers we should print this out and pin it up somewhere!
That said, just because you're good at something it doesn't mean you shouldn't practise it and try to get even better!
Today I'm taking the athlete Usain Bolt as a case in point - he was the fastest man in the world last month yet last week yet he went out and beat his own record. I'm sure if that had been me I would have simply dined out on the first record...well, for at least a few months.
As everyone knows - you're only as good at the last one. Bolt knows that he's only as good as that last record, and what a record! Writers, poets, musicians, artists, we're all only as good as our last piece so we owe it to ourselves to keep writing, keep practising and keep getting better.
How do you get better?
Keep reading, keep writing and keep learning with an open mind, it's as simple as that. The more good quality writing your read the more you'll absorb and then begin to produce good writing yourself. A good writer is always a reader first.
Okay so preaching over for a while.
The reason I think I've become more confident is because I believe in what I've written. I believe it's clear, concise and sounds like me, it's not me trying to fit with some style I think I should be following. I've read a few blogs recently that advise just this - write in the style that suits you - if you're a crime writer or a romance writer, write that! That's not to say you shouldn't try your hand at expanding your repertoire and improving your writing but don't turn your back on what you find easy just because you think it should be difficult.
In writing this blog post I've also realised something for myself....I don't like the standard bookmarks feature in Firefox (which I use)and I need to find something easy to use to collect up all those excellent blogs that I've read so I can share them with a wider audience. There is a wealth of knowledge out there and I'm losing a good deal of it by not cataloguing it properly.
Hmm...something for me to work on next.
Tuesday 18 August 2009
Twitter and other useful stuff
I know, I know, I'm really bad at keeping this up to date and I just end up making myself feel even more guilty (good Catholic Guilt) every time I read some of the amazing blogs that are out there.
Anyway, recently I've become rather fond of Twitter. First of all I did the whole fan thing and followed Stephen Fry - you have to really, it's a given in the UK that he's a National Treasure and all that, sort of on a par with the Queen Mother (God rest her soul, Knees up Mother Brown, Blitz Spirit and all that). Then I began to nose around a bit and see who else I should follow...
blah, blah, blah
more about my entry into Twitterland
blah, blah, blah
Hugh Laurie, blah, blah, blah
Mrs Stephen Fry, blah, blah, blah
Then...
I began to follow writers, publishers and agents and now...just like every good advert, I'm finding many different interesting things all over the place that I'm using regularly to write with - prompts and so on and also lists of magazines looking for submissions.
I realise that this is the potted version and those of you looking for some real meat to this post will be rather disappointed so far...I know, I need to do better with posting blog entries - I'll try.
Meanwhile, I'll share with you a couple of things that I now use regularly because they help me to plan and to write.
The first thing is Free Mind which is an open source piece of software for Mind Mapping - if you've never given MM a go, do try it - especially if you're at all creative and tend to think in clusters or images.
I've been working on a few Fine Art lectures I've got to give next academic year and Mind Mapping them is the ideal way for me to throw down as many ideas as I can and then begin to link them and organise them effectively.
I've also used MM to plot and develop short stories, it's also great for developing a character. It's easy to list lots of attributes or possible events without tying yourself down to a list of and then, and then.
How to do Mind Mapping is explained nicely here at Lite Mind.
Try it!
Now, the second bit of useful stuff I've discovered on Twitter is an evil way of making you write more which is always an excellent thing to do but as most writers are terrible procrastinators (as I'm writing this I'm avoiding writing an article I've been asked to do) being forced to write is a Good Thing. So, I found this web page called Dr. Wicked's Writing Lab - Write or Die.
Well obviously you don't actually die if you don't write - at least, not on this site - but it is a fiendish way of making you get words down.
And that's what writing and being a writer is all about - getting words down. No one said anything about Great Words - they come in amongst all the rubbish. Writing is a bit like mining for gold I find - lots and lots of spoil comes out and in amongst that you might find something nice and shiny and worth holding on to...sometimes.
Right, that's enough for today.
I'll try to be better about keeping this up...maybe I need to make it more a part of my procrastination.....
Anyway, recently I've become rather fond of Twitter. First of all I did the whole fan thing and followed Stephen Fry - you have to really, it's a given in the UK that he's a National Treasure and all that, sort of on a par with the Queen Mother (God rest her soul, Knees up Mother Brown, Blitz Spirit and all that). Then I began to nose around a bit and see who else I should follow...
blah, blah, blah
more about my entry into Twitterland
blah, blah, blah
Hugh Laurie, blah, blah, blahMrs Stephen Fry, blah, blah, blah
Then...
I began to follow writers, publishers and agents and now...just like every good advert, I'm finding many different interesting things all over the place that I'm using regularly to write with - prompts and so on and also lists of magazines looking for submissions.
I realise that this is the potted version and those of you looking for some real meat to this post will be rather disappointed so far...I know, I need to do better with posting blog entries - I'll try.
Meanwhile, I'll share with you a couple of things that I now use regularly because they help me to plan and to write.
The first thing is Free Mind which is an open source piece of software for Mind Mapping - if you've never given MM a go, do try it - especially if you're at all creative and tend to think in clusters or images. I've been working on a few Fine Art lectures I've got to give next academic year and Mind Mapping them is the ideal way for me to throw down as many ideas as I can and then begin to link them and organise them effectively.
I've also used MM to plot and develop short stories, it's also great for developing a character. It's easy to list lots of attributes or possible events without tying yourself down to a list of and then, and then.
How to do Mind Mapping is explained nicely here at Lite Mind.
Try it!
Now, the second bit of useful stuff I've discovered on Twitter is an evil way of making you write more which is always an excellent thing to do but as most writers are terrible procrastinators (as I'm writing this I'm avoiding writing an article I've been asked to do) being forced to write is a Good Thing. So, I found this web page called Dr. Wicked's Writing Lab - Write or Die.
Well obviously you don't actually die if you don't write - at least, not on this site - but it is a fiendish way of making you get words down.
And that's what writing and being a writer is all about - getting words down. No one said anything about Great Words - they come in amongst all the rubbish. Writing is a bit like mining for gold I find - lots and lots of spoil comes out and in amongst that you might find something nice and shiny and worth holding on to...sometimes.
Right, that's enough for today.
I'll try to be better about keeping this up...maybe I need to make it more a part of my procrastination.....
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