Keep Typing

"Writers can affirm and celebrate or they can destroy."                                                                                                   --William Zinsser



Scene: American Housewife (ABC) situation comedy. Husband is settling into den to write about John Stuart Mill. His wife observes his writing ritual which is reported as: "He poses like Wonder Woman for 2 minutes to raise his testosterone. Then he listens to jazz to activate his right brain. Next, he eats almonds for energy. Finally, he has a glass of port to loosen up. If we were rich, it'd be eccentric. We're not, so it's just plain weird." 

We all have them...writing rituals. A special chair or pen, clean office or crowded library, mornings only or at midnight when the house is finally quiet. The rituals can be adorable, or as mentioned, just plain weird. Maybe the key question is if the rituals help the writing or prevent the writing. On an episode of House Hunters International, a man hoping to write his first book toured a potential property and proclaimed that he couldn't write in the space. Couldn't or wouldn't?? Books have been written in coffee shops and offices. They've been written by harried moms of preschoolers and busy attorneys. Doctors and laborers.

November 15 is "I Love to Write Day." If you're participating in NaNoWriMo, you're halfway there. Hopefully this can be a day of perfect verbs and nouns, phrases that don't sound cliched, and characters that ring true, not as silly caricatures.

If your writing has hit a wall, it can help to get advice from the masters. William Zinsser, author of several books including On Writing Well, advised writers to ask what are your values and intentions as a writer? If you're writing a memoir, hold the emotion, Zinsser said. He added that writers shouldn't set out to write a heart-tugging memoir, to make sure details ring true, and that getting published isn't the only reason to write your story. "Don't whine," he said. For more information, check out Zinsser's blog, The American Scholar.

Books to consider: 

The Writing Life: A collection of essays and interviews - National Book Award authors

Writing About Your Life - William Zinsser

Expressive Writing: Words That Heal - Pennebaker/Evans

Writing From the Body - John Lee

Chambers Biographical Dictionary

Bill Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words - Bill Bryson

The Craft & Business of Writing - Writer's Digest Books

Steering the Craft - Ursula LeGuin

The Grammar Devotional - Mignon Fogarty

To Show and To Tell - Phillip Lopate

On Becoming a Novelist - John Gardner

Art of Memoir - Mary Karr

The Mindful Writer - Dinty Moore

Writing Flash Nonfiction/Writing Flash Fiction - Rose Metal Press Guide

Micro Fiction - Jerome Stern


"I'm not sure what prompted me to start writing another book....there was certainly nothing to be gained by feeling sorry for myself. Telling stories was still a means of escape. And so I put a fresh sheet of paper into the machine, ready to flee once again. This time I no longer thought about getting published, but just wrote for my own amusement. The journey, not the destination, became the thing, and I rediscovered the simple satisfaction of seeing my ideas materialize before me, sentence after sentence." from A Good American by Alex George  

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