Recently in Writing Category

We celebrate writing on this WordPunk blog -- and we do love our new iPhone 3G -- even though the White Apple of Death drives us nuts daily.  One of the invaluable assets for the iPhone 3G is the Apps Store.  I spent $100.00USD to buy several dictionaries for use on my iPhone 3G.  In this review, I will look up one of my favorite words -- "semiotic" -- and one of my favorite people -- "Clinton" -- to see what results are returned.  You do not need an internet connection to use any of these dictionaries.  All definitions are installed on your iPhone 3G.

In one of my many lives, I am a Script Doctor -- but I call myself a Script Professor because I think that editorial and writing process should be evolutionary and not surgical if you really want to provide an everlasting value for the money spent.

As an author, you must always write your own way, but you must also arouse the mercy of your readers in order to create evergreen True Art.

I am in favor of iteration, but not reflective iteration, because that is static and dead.

Reflexive iteration, however, is fascinating and necessary.

I always find it wildly malfeasant and mindlessly entertaining when the mainstream press gets involved in "outing" a book that promises non-fiction -- but turns out to be invented or reality-inspired fiction. 

Oprah bagged James Frey on her television show after it was revealed his book was not all "true" -- and now the author of a gangland story is being "outed" for fakery on the page.

The role of the writer in society is one of a questioning dissent.

It is not enough for the writer to merely go along with the status quo or to live in the mainstream meme.

Writers should have no Muses, honor no myths, and follow no Sirens.

The job of the author is just that:  A job. 

There is a necessary pedantic dreariness to the writing process that must be honored and consumed on a daily basis. 

In a recent comments stream on another blog post, I said this about the book writing process:

You just have to sit down and do it and get it done. There's no inspiration involved. No big thoughts. Just words on a page. There is too much danger of never writing another word if the process is too romanticized. That's what's so great about writing four blogs -- I need to come up with something good fast even if I don't feel like it -- that training comes in really handy while trying to pound out a book on a hard deadline.

If we hope to be authors, we must hone that craft -- notice I said "craft" and not "art" -- all day every day with formal, public, writing that is open to feedback, criticism, and future indexing by the search engines.

Only that forced guarantee of "published" writing will keep us cogent, on point, and forever improving --  because the future, and the history, we make each day requires hard judgments against our best intentions.

For at least the past 20 years or so magazine publishers have tried to get away with paying authors by-the-word at a dime per word and without any future rights reverting back to the author.

Not only is ten-cents-a-word an outrageously bad sum of non-money -- it denigrates the idea of "the whole of the writing" by breaking down the craft into its tiniest bits and not even its architectural pieces.

Many authors are taught to write in the now and to write in the moment -- and while that idea is good and fine -- it does not always allow for introspection from the distance of time.

If we write from memory, instead of from the moment, we immediately enrich our lives, and the experience for the reader, because wisdom and yearning are embedded in the word.

Memes and their memories create shared intelligence.

Memory imbues intellect and emotion belies meaning. 

Memory leads us onto paths we share, but have yet to discover, while emotion -- made of fuzziness and heartache -- confuses and misleads us by bending light. 

Many years ago I was considering getting an advanced degree in screenwriting at UCLA. 

I was invited to sit in on a class and I was glad I did because it was during that visit I realized UCLA was not the right place for me.