Go Farther

1. Read.  Read anything you can find. It’s similar to the advice of copying a phone book when one has writer’s block. The related action fires the kiln of your brain. I prefer essays and works on how people think and make decisions. Or ideas on creativity or novels. When reading novels, I enjoy the Easter egg hunt for great sentences and identifying their construction. Look up words for which you don’t know the meaning, especially words with which you are familiar but could not yourself use in a sentence. This morning I learned unctuous, aggrieved, and erudition.

2. Read and write simultaneously.  As you are reading and thoughts, ideas, and concepts develop, write them down. You may begin reading mostly and jotting an occasionaly note. Eventually the writing will take over and the book is placed quietly aside. Stand on the shoulders of giants.

3. Arise early. Starting the day while it’s still night motivates by this simple sense of accomplishment.

4. Think about your writing the evening prior.  It’s best t consider the topic about which you’d like to write, but most any topic will do. Last night, I thought about the best way to spend $25 after the responses received from a Craig’s List ad posted for part-time nanny help. A second idea was to hand out 25 $1 bills on a public corner to watch people’s reaction. It’s about pushing the brain into motion.

5. Use paper and pen to start. They allow you to draw associations between ideas you’ve written. Imagine you are Mozart and your pen is a quill as you scratch out a sonata or concerto.  Listen for the music in your mind. Find a rhythm in your writing. Write quickly and legibly. Once you become exhausted, ready what you’ve written to add ideas and small corrections. Then later, type your writings into notes. Do your editing then.

6. Travel by train. Planes are acceptable but they are considerably more stressful and include many more variables such as seat mates, space, time, and the exhaustion of energy required to board. Trains maintain a connection to reality, yet transport you from the before to the after in a predictable, soothing way. Using paper and pen may be exceedingly more difficult by train. Be prepared for this.

7. Find your writing music.  I do well with piano like Ludovico Einaudi, Will Ackerman, and Brian Crane. Sometimes I can work with new age like Enya and Enigma, but the music must be familiar to me and only if I listen to the beat and mostly ignore the lyrics. Find what works and reserve that genre for your writing.

8. Stand in a familiar room from an odd vantage point, then be still for a few minutes.

It shakes you from your routine. Maybe it’s sitting on the kitchen counter, or standing in a closet, or laying on your belly in the hallway or on your back with your head tilted sideways. New perspectives breed new thoughts. I think this is why trains work so well. The view is constantly changing, yet in a familiar environment.

9. Stop trying. You can introduce writing, but you can’t force it. If you’re not swimming in creative juices, take a moment to recognize it. Then reach for a book and begin reading.

10. Ask yourself questions. This creates a conversation.

11. Know your routine. Find inefficiencies and correct them. I arise early, take a shower, make coffee and breakfast, then sit to write. Thus, I must remember to start the coffee before the shower, have my desk clear and computer closed, pens and note cards ready, and listen to music via my phone instead of a web browser. This flow allows me to dive immediately into writing. If I am traveling, I look excitedly ahead to the early train so I arise enthusiastically with the alarm, as it frees me from my sleep instead of awakening me from my slumber.

More on creativity and ideas from people much smarter than me:

John Cleese on Creativity

James Altucher: Brain Storming – Everything is Allowed and How to have great ideas

Five Manifestos for the Creative Life

Magic Hours: Tom Bissell on the Secrets of Creators and Creation

Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit (and the inspiration for today’s post)

[Updated the title.  Was previously – “My 24 rules for writing.” I expect over time I’ll discover more rules.]

I thought it was time I organized my own rules of writing. These are personal and will not work for everyone. Feel free to use, copy, or ignore.

1. Never use the word “get” for any reason. It’s lazy and imaginative.
2. Never use a thesaurus to find a word.  Use it to help you find you want to say.
3. Writing something is always better than writing nothing. You can always discard something. Nothing can never be good enough to keep or use.
4. In case of writer’s block, read about human decision-making, economics, how people think, and essays. Interpretations of core philosophical works are acceptable but not the original works themselves. They are too dense to identify what is valid or important. Leave that to people much smarter than you.
5. Think about your topic the night before you plan to write.
6. Confirm your subject-predicate agreements.
7. Incomplete sentences are acceptable. Sometimes.
8. Use commas, but judiciously to guide the reader on how you’d prefer they read the sentence.
9. Think “long, short, short” in constructing a paragraph.
10. If you need a semicolon, your sentence is completely fucked up.
11. Never end sentences with prepositions.
12. Check your subject-predicate agreements.
13. Scrap all attempts to be funny. Situations are funny. Stories are funny. Writers are not.
14. Don’t try to out-wit your reader. Attempts to do so will fail miserably and your writing becomes childish.
15. Read your sentences aloud during proofreading. It will embarass you into writing better.
16. Editing always takes longer than writing. Plan for this.
17. Writing dialogue is very difficult to make believable or interesting. Make it good or skip it altogether.
18. Write on paper with a good pen from time to time. Thoughts flow differently in a new environment. Have pads of paper and pens scattered around the house at all times for this purpose.
19. Write whenever and wherever an inspiration emerges because it’s unlikely that same inspiration will come again.
20. As soon as you realize that you’re becoming tired and losing focus, you are. Keep writing if you so choose, but it is unlikely that more coffee or a break will help.  You’re done for the day.  Rejoice – the hard work is now done.
21. If you disagree with someone, don’t tip-toe around with “I don’t totally agree.” Remember your debate lessons. “While he makes several valid points, I disagree.” is the correct way to present an opposing viewpoint. Otherwise your writing is just fluff without a backbone.
22. Avoid similes.
23. Be honest.
24. Brevity is preferred.

Somehow found 90 minutes to watch this entire program yesterday – “George Orwell – A life in pictures.”

What I learned:

• Was born into “lower end of upper middle class England” and lived among the homeless for two years to understand what it was like to hit bottom so that he could effectively write about it.
• Orwell didn’t write “Animal Farm” and “1984” to promote free markets and democracy. As an ardent defender of the working class, he was an anti-totalitarist.
• He believed that one might as well put salt or pepper in their tea if they were inclined to use sugar.  Tea should be strong to the taste, with six scoops without a bag of any kind to
• He fought in the Spanish revolution in the 1930s.
• He wanted Britain to have their own workers revolution that he personally witnessed in Spain.
• The British government didn’t want him to publish Animal Farm in 1944 because of the war effort, and suggested that he change the ruling class in the book from pigs to some other animal that would be less offensive.
• He wrote 1984 from his bed, and finishing the book, collapsed from his long bout with tuberculosis and died just weeks later.