Tweeting My Life Away!

By: Twitter Buttons

Future of Journalism: Lesley Jane Seymour

Lesley Jane Seymour
Editor-in-Chief of More
Former Editor-in-Chief of Marie Claire, Redbook, YM

I asked Ms. Seymour:

What do you tell young, aspiring journalists about the future of the business? Can you still be encouraging? What advice do you give them?

Her response:

As a life-long journalist who also teaches journalism at the grad school at NYU, I have to tell you that journalism will never die. It is an integral part of our democracy in the US and an important part of helping the world develop properly. Without the eye of the public exposing crimes, wrongs, cheating, evil, etc. we can be too easily duped and swayed and our governments hijacked. Just look at Iran: the first thing you do to solidify an illegitimate regime is sweep the journalists off the street. What is going away is print. Don't confuse the two. And we may need to separate sensationalism from journalism: they are not the same thing just as the New York Post is not the Washington Post.

Dave Eggers: Ted Prize Wish

Slice of the Writing Life: Not Writing

Someone asked Writing Down the Bones author Natalie Goldberg: “What are the most common excuses you hear at your workshops for people not writing?”

Goldberg’s response: It goes something like: “I’m afraid to let myself out. I’m afraid to follow what I really want. I can’t do it right now, but it’s my deepest dream. I can’t do it because I have a family and I have to make a living. I am scared that I’m not good enough.”

I don’t pay much attention at that level. All I hear is an excuse. In other words, these people want something but they’re not willing to step forward and grab it. Over the last 17 years that I’ve been teaching writers, what I’ve watched is that people don’t let themselves burn. They don’t let their passion come alive. They don’t feed it. To me it doesn’t really matter what the excuse is.

Now I can hear you saying, “Well, but what if the excuse is true? What if the person does have six children and they work two jobs in order to feed them?” What I say is that if the person burns to write, they will have to find time to do it, even if it’s one half hour a week. You have to somehow address your whole life. You can’t put it off till you’re 60. You might die at 59.

You know, we all have tremendously strong monkey minds that are very creative, that can make endless excuses. “I really can’t write today because my daughter is having trouble in school. I really can’t write because I have a stomachache every time I write.” Monkey mind will always think of new reasons why we can’t write. What I teach is if you want to write, Do it. Now.

Interview with J.K. Rowling

Affirmations to Write By

I am a creative person who develops my plots with great imagination and artistic vision.

I giggle sometimes when I sit down to write, because the words come so easily to me.

I have unlimited writing potential; I have unlimited creativity.

I have the power and discipline to successfully finish my writing project.

I don’t wait for inspiration. Work inspires inspiration. If I succeed, I keep working. If I fail, I keep working. Whether I feel interested or bored, energized or tired, encouraged or discouraged, happy or angry, inspired or uninspired, I keep working.

Scene vs. Summary or: It’s Time for Show and Tell

Scene vs. Summary or: It’s Time for Show and Tell
By Jeanne Lyet Gassman

Every beginning fiction writer is advised to “show, don’t tell.” But what does this really mean? I can remember attending a writer’s conference early in my career, listening to a renowned author repeat this adage as the most important thing every writer should know. Of course, I thought, nodding sagely, that makes perfect sense.

Then I left the conference wondering, How do you do it?

Scene vs. summary. Personally, I think the words “show” and “tell” are a bit too abstract for most beginning writers to grasp. I’ve heard many writers swear that they were “showing” when, in fact, they were doing the exact opposite. Perhaps the terms “scene” and “summary” would be more helpful in understanding the difference.

Summary. Let’s begin with the concept of summary (telling).

Suppose you have a friend who attended a very exciting party. On Monday morning, he tells you that Tom drank too much and embarrassed his wife, Jane. He complains to you about the waiters, saying that they acted snooty. Your friend laughs about Rick’s funny stories but can’t remember the details of them. In essence, he is summarizing (telling) the events at the party. Since you didn’t go to the party, you didn’t see what Tom did to embarrass his wife. You didn’t experience the waiters ignoring people’s drink orders. You didn’t hear any of Rick’s jokes. Your job as the writer is to bring the reader to the party. How do you do this? You write scenes rather than summary.

Scene. A scene can be as short as a single paragraph or as long as several pages. It should contain at least two of the following elements:

Direct action
Dialogue
Internal monologue
Narration

Of these, narration is the least dynamic component of fiction. When a writer depends too much on narration, he risks falling into the trap of summarizing (telling) rather than creating active scenes (showing). Narration either sets the scene or functions as a transition for time or place. As a transition in time, your narration might look something like this: “It took Sarah three hours to clean all of the blood from the carpet.” This is an example of transition in setting: “Peter left his grandmother’s house and returned to work.”

Note that I have not listed description as an important component of a scene. When description isn’t incorporated into action, dialogue, or thought, it becomes static, presenting itself as the deadly “telling” creature. For example: “She wore a red woolen scarf.” (telling/summary) Compare this to the more active: “Wrapping her red woolen scarf snugly around her neck, she braved the stinging wind.” (showing/scene)

From summary to scene. To view the scene vs. summary process in action, let’s take a look at two examples of the same event. The first version is summary (telling):

“Judith was furious when Richard asked for a divorce after almost fourteen years of marriage.”

Now, let’s convert that to a scene (showing):

“Richard was still blabbing on and on about ‘spending some time apart’ and the need to ‘find himself,’ but Judith had stopped listening long ago. She found herself staring at his teeth. They were ugly teeth really, big and flat like a beaver’s teeth, and the handlebar mustache he had grown last year only accentuated their hideous shape. Richard truly had the mouth of a nasty rodent. How had she missed such an important detail in almost fourteen years of marriage? She looked down at her hands, aware that she had shredded her paper napkin into small bits of confetti. She wondered if her fingernails could accomplish that same result on Richard’s pasty cheek.”

Do you see the difference? We know exactly how Judith feels without ever once telling the reader that she’s angry. Some writers mistakenly worry that showing creates wordiness, but a fully realized scene will always contain more words than simple narration. And a scene with action, dialogue, and emotion is much more compelling than a summary.

Just for fun this time, I will close this with a homework challenge. The following is the summary of a scene that appears in the novel, The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan. See if you can find the scene it summarizes. (Hint: The scene appears in the chapter called: “JING-MEI WOO: Best Quality.”)

“After dinner, I helped my mother clear and wash the dishes. I tried to compliment her on the dinner, but she dismissed my compliment. I guess Chinese mothers are like that. I asked her why she didn’t eat her crab, and she insisted that the crab was spoiled. She told me she knew the crab was bad before she cooked it. I asked her what she would have done if someone else at dinner had chosen the spoiled crab, but she didn’t seem concerned. She smiled and said that she knew I was the only other person at the dinner who would have picked the bad crab because everyone else wants the best quality for himself.”

Happy writing! And don’t forget to invite your readers to the party!

Jeanne Lyet Gassman is an award-winning writer whose fiction and nonfiction has been published in numerous magazines, newsletters, and anthologies. The recipient of artistic grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Creative Capital Foundation, she is currently studying for her MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Phoenix and teaches writing workshops and classes in the metro area.

Visit Ms. Gassman at her Web site:

http://www.jeannelyetgassman.com
Click here

Or her blog:

http://jeannelyetgassman.blogspot.com
Click here

Writer's Relief, Inc.

Spotlight Interview: Dave Herndon/Part 1

Dave Herndon, Editor/Writer

Whether he’s writing or editing, Dave Herndon is all about passion and exotic adventure—which makes him the perfect fit for his current position as Editor in Chief of Caribbean Travel & Life.

In an incredibly rich, varied career, he’s been a Features Editor/Writer/Critic for the New York daily newspaper Newsday; Managing Editor for The Village Voice; Senior Editor for Travel & Leisure; Features Editor for Sports Afield; Contributing Editor for Martha Stewart Living, as well as, I must add, one of the most important people in my writing life.

When he was the Sports Editor of the Voice in the mid 1980’s, he gave me the enormous break of my own column, Mike Geffner’s Rundown, which I wrote for the next 12 years. But, just as importantly, he taught me how to be a better writer. I will forever be indebted to him for that.

The following is the first part of my exclusive newsletter interview with Dave:

Mike: Who were your early writing influences?

Herndon: Like many who went to college in the 70’s, my writing style probably suffered for a long time from the influence of Hunter Thompson’s and Tom Wolfe’s books and articles from that era.

For a long while I used to travel with a copy of Rilke's “Letters to a Young Poet,” which young writers might benefit from, as they are about life lessons that apply to work, among other realms.

Mike: What are the most common misconceptions writers have about editors?

Herndon: That they la-di-da around all day, then suddenly make you start jumping through hoops to make up for their slackness/indecision/capriciousness. This is only partly true.

Mike: What’s the best advice you can give inexperienced writers trying to break through, or writers with some experience looking get to the next level?

Herndon: Make yourself useful. Hit your deadlines. Produce clean copy. Write thorough sidebars. Help editors solve their problems. Be willing to do grunt work (i.e. service shorts).

Mike: What simple plan can you give someone trying to make writing a career?

Herndon: Develop a specialty. Become the go-to person for some niche of
coverage, preferably something uncrowded, that you're passionate about and there's enough of a market for, or an emerging market for (e.g, over the last couple decades: fitness, technology, fringe sports going mainstream, like mountain biking, etc.). Don't turn up your nose at service writing.

Mike: Which easier—writing or editing?

Herndon: It's easier to make a living as an editor—more jobs. Freelancing is hell, and getting more hellish all the time. Try to find a mix—an editing job where you can also write, or a part-time/flextime editing job that covers the nut, has benefits, and leaves time for freelancing.

I wouldn't now recommend newspapers as a stable writing platform. I don't know what I would recommend, frankly, because things are changing so fast.

From the Movie "Freedom Writers": A Dream (by Common)