if you’re anything like me and spent the duration of
NaNoWriMo procrastinating exam revision and then stressing over how little exam
revision you have done, i thoroughly suggest you take time out of any leave you may have been given off school/work/llama herding this festive season to do the very thing you put aside -the glorious art of writing!!!
of course, this is easier said than done and so out of the goodness of my heart i've assembled tips/rules/advice from accomplished writers whose work i enjoy in an effort to get you and i fired up with inspiration.
in 1946 George Orwell published an essay titled Politics and the English Language, in which he
argued that the worlds of politics and business purposefully express
themselves imprecisely as to avoid taking a side in any matter and as a result
offending numerous persons which would eventually lead to the cogs working in
their machines to render themselves default, leaving the business and political
worlds to collapse in on themselves. he
was just that anarchist, okay??? the author’s rules are brief, concise, and pithy and i am breaking rule #3 with this very sentence.
Zadie Smith is one of my favourite authors ever – her work
is fresh and witty and beautiful and every other positive adjective you can
think of. yeah i am a proud president of the (albeit; imaginary) Zadie Smith Fangirl Club. ((WHY HASN’T SHE PROPOSED TO ME YET???)) her rules show her natural flair for writing.
the article, an adaptation of a speech Eugenides gave to the
2012 recipients of the Whiting Award, is full of cold truths presented in the
author’s typical glowing and glittering poetic manner.
Jack Kerouac is like the middle ground between George Orwell and
Jeffrey Eugenides; the writing love child of starkness and mysticism. his beliefs about writing are more like tips.
my own itty bitty piece of advice for struggling
writers out there is the following:
listen to songs that are stories. they get your sense of a
story outline going and sometimes give you themes to toy with in your drafts (such as unrequited love, going against your parent’s wishes, etc.).
three of my favourite story songs:
Pulp, Disco 2000
Sonic Youth, Little Trouble Girl
Tom Milsom, About Our Universe
if you are one of those people that can’t stand listening to
lyrics when typing away, film soudtracks are the absolute best thing ever.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, In Motion (from The Social Network's OST)
Hans Zimmer, Mermaids (from the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides OST)
Danny Elfman, Ice Dance (from the Edward Scissorhands OST)
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