Crafting Your Writing Life Part III: Process

As you develop your craft, you will notice that you’re also developing a “process.”

There’s a lot of talk about process, and a sense, among some writers, that too much emphasis is put on the process and not enough is placed on the quality of the work. I agree that some writers are self-indulgent along those lines, but, for the most part, I think a strong process not only shores up the work, but makes the journey from inspiration to publication much more pleasant.

Discover the conditions that support your best writing. Do you like solitude or music? Do you need a cabin in the woods or a table in an urban café? Do you blank-page (also called “pantsing”) or do you outline? Do you mix the two? Is there a ritual at the beginning and end of every writing session that helps you mentally and physically prepare for the task at hand?

The only way to discover your process is through trial and error, as you hone your craft. You’ll find out what works and does not work for you, and then you have a springboard for the next project.

However, once you’ve built your process, you have to make sure you don’t trap yourself within it. There’s not a single way to write, and every project insists on at least a partial re-invention of the wheel. I’ve watched writers develop a process and then, if there’s any deviation – well, what a good excuse not to write!

If you plan to make this your career, “can’t” is not an option.

Your process, even when it’s mutable, needs to support the ultimate outcome of your writing: a strong, well-told story that captures its readers.

–Devon Ellington

Internet Threatens Dictionary Sales

Recent research conducted by Book Marketing Ltd., has highlighted a significant drop in reference books including dictionaries by as much as 40% over the past four years.

Dictionaries, encyclopaedias and atlases, perhaps three of the most vital reference books for readers and writers alike, have plummeted in sales due to the increasing impact of online resource material in the UK alone, with some publishers going as far as to predict a total cessation of sales altogether in the next few years.

Oxford English Dictionaries will later this year launch an enhanced online service to its customers, in an effort to remain ahead of the English-language competition. Casper Grathwohl, Executive of Oxford University Press said: “People still want dictionary authority and material, they are just going to different sources for it.

“Once you establish a brand in print and that is your medium for hundreds of years, it is a challenge to transfer it online, so there is nostalgia, but no more than in the fact that books in general are being superseded by online resources.”

Grathwohl promised Oxford would live up to its scholarly reputation, and added: “It doesn’t come in a nice package to give someone as a gift at Christmas or for graduation, but it’s probably a better tool for them when they go off to university.”

Bestselling Scottish author, Julie Bertagna, believes there would be a loss “in so many areas of life” were dictionaries to disappear entirely.

“At the moment I think we have a wonderful balance of reference systems with paper dictionaries and internet access,” she said. “It’s important for children to learn all kinds of reference skills, like using a dictionary and a telephone directory. Internet source dictionaries are also important because of the speed at which we are acquiring new words.”

Publishers, authors and booksellers met last week at the Booksellers Association Conference to discuss the future of the book industry and the decline of the reference book.

Francis Bennett, Managing Director of BookData, said that while booksellers were working on digital strategies, many publishers were unsure what they should be doing to respond to the challenge.

“I don’t think the industry has come up with any major solutions,” he said. “It’s a bit like planting seeds, and what we have got in the field is a few things popping up, but nothing has actually grown.

“Ultimately, it allows us to get content to more people in more ways. I think it’s a profoundly important development which will change the book trade for many years to come.”

~ Colin Galbraith ~

Crafting Your Writing Life — Part II: Craft

Have you answered the questions from last week’s column? “How badly do I want to be a writer, and how do I get there?” Just because you agonized over the answers does not mean you’ll ever have to stop asking the questions. You will have to re-visit them regularly, AND the answers will shift as your life grows and changes.

Before you can even consider major lifestyle changes, you have to write. That means carving time out for yourself every day without excuses in order to work on your craft. Sometimes, you have to say no to family and friends. Kids do NOT have to be entertained twenty four hours a day. In fact, it’s detrimental to their development to be passive – they need to be active. Set an example about the benefits of imagination by using yours.

At this stage, the most important thing to develop is your craft. You schedule in the time, the way you would grad school or a continuing ed class – several hours several times a week, with fifteen minutes to a half hour EVERY DAY as homework. Work on exercises, short stories, and, importantly, read as much as you can in as many genres as you can to learn the craft.

What kind of storytelling works? Where does a writer miss the mark? The more you read for craft as well as content, the better your writing will become. And write, write, write, write, write.

Spelling, grammar, and sentence structure count. Editors are too overworked and underpaid to have the time to spend teaching you what you should have learned in the third grade, had you paid attention. It is YOUR responsibility to learn it now. Go to the university bookstore or on-line and purchase grammar texts, spelling books, etc. It’s part of your homework. Learn how to construct and deconstruct sentences, how to build paragraphs, how to write a well-reasoned essay. The best book for this is Strunk and White’s ELEMENTS OF STYLE. Read it cover to cover (and keep it handy — I read it cover to cover whenever I’m revising a long piece).

Journal entries count. Blogs count. A sloppy blog entry, filled with typos and poor sentence construction means that you practice sloppy writing instead of using the blog to hone your craft. Take the time to read it over and fix the errors before you post. With very few exceptions, if a so-called writer’s blog is filled with spelling, grammar, and structural errors, I don’t visit it very often. It’s too irritating. I admit that I’m more forgiving when I read non-writers’ blogs – but even there, a certain level of disdain for craft, and I don’t stick around.

Blogs are writing practice.

“Practice” is important. The daily writing muscles need to be exercised as much as your other muscles. You need to keep mentally fit as well as physically fit.

This step on the journey is all about craft. And it never stops. As long as you write, you can always improve your craft. The better your craft, the more likely you can build a writing life.

–Devon Ellington

Horses Heads To Uplift Scottish Canal

A new £25 million tourist attraction is to be constructed in Scotland, aimed at helping to revive the fortunes of the Forth and Clyde Canal. Glasgow artist Andy Scott plans to create two 115-foot high horses head sculptures, which would also form the structure of a new boat lift on the canal.

The horses heads are based on the mythical creature, the Scottish Kelpie. Half-horse and half-serpent, it is believed to have lured weary travellers into the water.

Scott, 43, who is best known for the Heavy Horse sculpture by the M8 motorway in Glasgow (see image), has also created works in Australia. He is currently finishing two 10ft high prototypes which he hopes will boost the chances of gaining Lottery funding for the project.

Dubbed the Helix Project, Lottery funding is essential if it is to go ahead. The project would also see the creation of 740 acres of green space, a 750,000-tree woodland, and 20 miles of new paths and cycleways between Falkirk and Grangemouth.

Scott said: “Imagine sailing into Scotland from the West coast and seeing these colossal horses.

“There are many strands of interpretation too. You’ve got the mythological Kelpie horses and you have got the heavy horses which were the powerhouse of the industrial revolution.

“The hardest thing, as with all these projects, is funding.”

A bid to the Big Lottery Fund’s Living Landmarks Programme will be made in May and the winner announced in October.

Digital image used by kind permission from David Dalziel Photography
Image Copyright © David Dalziel.

~ Colin Galbraith ~

Creating Your Literary Life — Part I

I’m not sure how many weeks this will run, but I’m going to toss a few ideas your way that may help you craft the life you want in this life – and most techniques can be applied to any life in the arts that you wish.

There are two questions you must ask and answer initially for yourself.

The first is:

How badly do I want this?

The second is:

How do I get there?

From that, you can structure and re-structure your life, figure out where you are and aren’t willing to make compromises, and put your plan into action. No one else’s answers will fit you – it’s as individual as your fingerprints. No one else lives your life or lives in your skin. You have to figure this out.

It doesn’t mean you have to be ruthless, selfish, and completely self-involved. In fact, in the bigger picture of the Universe, you’ll probably do better if you’re not. But it does mean creating boundaries, removing toxic people from your life, and getting out of your own way.

Take a few days and think about it: How badly do you want this? Write about it. Write as many pages as you wish every day, if that helps.

The “how do I get there?” will take longer.

And remember – none of these decisions are hard and fast. As you grow, evolve, learn, and mature into your best writing self – you’ll need to adapt your overall plan so it can include your comprehensive self.

Good writers tend to be multi-dimensional human beings. The world has changed, and to accurately bear witness, portray, and develop hope for the future, the writer has to evolve with it.

–Devon Ellington

Harry Horse Commemoration Stage Show Planned

Harry Horse, the political cartoonist, musician and children’s author who tragically died in January alongside his wife Mandy, is to have his life and work commemorated in a special stage show to be taken across Scotland.

The actor Tam Dean Burn, who is currently starring in the National Theatre of Scotland production of Tutti Frutti, is hoping to take a national tour in autumn of this year of a show created using Horse’s own words and images and combining them with unreleased tracks he recorded with his band, Swamptrash.

“I’d be very keen to do it because I thought Harry Horse was fantastic,” Burn said. “I was surprised at how shocked I was that he had died and that we didn’t have him any more. I think he’s among the most striking political artists that I have ever seen.”

Burn has committed to writing the show this summer after completing a run with another NTS production, Venus As A Boy. He hopes to enlist his musician brother Russell Burn, formerly of The Fire Engines, and Malcolm Ross, guitarist in cult Edinburgh band Josef K and Orange Juice, but has said he will do it solo if need be.

“I’m not out to make money from it,” said Burn. “I just want to commemorate him. I’ll do it for nothing.

Harry Horse worked as a political cartoonist for the Sunday Herald, The Scotsman, Scotland On Sunday, The Observer, and The Independent. He was also the prize-winning author of a series of children’s books, one of which was made into a cartoon for television. He was a fine banjo player with his band Swamptrash, and he recorded an album called, It Makes No Never Mind, which included an unusual cover version of Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire.

Burn is hopeful that his commemorative show about Harry Horse will be on the road in time to mark the 250th anniversary of Blake’s birth on November 28.

The Scruffy Dog Review publicised an obituary at the time of Harry Horse’s death in January. Click here to read it.

Living By Your Wits

I’ve noticed something interesting and rather, in my opinion, hypocritical, in several on-line writer’s forums.

Many of the participants classify writers. Not just the age-old struggle between “literary” writers and “commercial” writers (which, fortunately, in this age of marketing-before-all-especially-before-writing seems to be winding down). But many of these writers consider the only “real” writers to be those who write fiction.

Today, as you go through your day, look around and see how much you read in passing: a newspaper, a billboard, a brochure, information on a website, watch a commercial in between programs. All of these bits were written by someone. Someone who is making a living doing this.

A writer who is walking the walk and making a living by his or her pen.

What’s interesting about the so-called writers who huff and puff and look down their pens at working writers is that most of them aren’t published. Oh, yes, they’re working on a novel, but, you see, there’s really no time, what with the husband or wife, and the children’s activities and all that. But, they’re thinking about the novel they’ll write someday; meanwhile, they’re going to get an agent for it and work on a marketing plan.

Of course, they don’t have to count on their writing in order to live. Either they have a 9-5 job they hate and plan to write “when they get around to it” or they’re living off a spouse’s full-time job.

A writer is someone who writes. Not someone who talks about doing it “when there’s time”, but someone who puts the butt down in the chair and gets it done.

The next phase of that life is to get paid for one’s work. When you have to pay the rent and bills by your pen, you learn quite quickly to get rid of the lack of time or the blocks, or whatever other excuses keep you from doing the work. You sit down and don’t get up until it’s done. You learn to compress the process to fit the deadline. You get the work in on time – and with quality – in order to get the check.

Arthur Miller once told me, “You’ll never be a writer until you have to rely on it for your income” and he was right. Once it’s life-or-death, all the obstacles evaporate – if you’re going to survive.

How many of you have the courage to survive by your pen? Because, in addition to talent and a strong work ethic, courage is the enormous component in the equation. Being a writer is genuinely “living by your wits.”

–Devon Ellington

Rankin To Mix It With Royalty

Edinburgh-based crime writer, Ian Rankin, was last week appointed one of five new Deputy Lieutenants of Edinburgh.

The honour, announced by Lord Provost Lesley Hinds, means the Rebus author has the responsibility of deputising for Cllr. Hinds during Royal visits to the city when she is unable to attend.

Rankin was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant during a ceremony along with four other high profile people who she felt had made a significant contribution to Edinburgh life. In the past such appointments only went to high-ranking members of the military.

Cllr. Hinds said: “This is a fantastic opportunity to recognise hard working contributors to Edinburgh’s community, business and cultural assets. Reinvigorating an ancient tradition in this way makes the point that Edinburgh is a city that can build on its past while looking to the future. This is the face of the 21st century.”

Deputy Lieutenants have been appointed in Edinburgh since the year 1569. There are currently 20 active Deputy Lieutenants, each expected to stay in office for 10 years or until they turn 75, which ever comes first.

Speaking of the honour, Rankin said; “When I opened the letter with the offer from the Lord Provost, I didn’t even know we had Deputy Lieutenants.

“It’s a great honour to have been offered the role. I was a bit worried when I received a text message from a friend saying I would have to wear a cockade!

Asked if he would be comfortable in the presence of royalty, Rankin continued: “I have met Prince Charles before, as well as Princess Anne and Prince Phillip, but never the Queen. That will be excellent.”

Glasgow Art Fair Hailed a Success

The biggest commercial art event to hit Glasgow took place last week. The 12th annual Glasgow Art Fair opened its doors to the public on Thursday 19th April, showcasing more than 1000 artists from all over the world and smashing all previous sales records into the bargain.

Last year 16,000 visitors packed into a large white tent on George Square, and art lovers spent more than £1million – buying all kinds of art from small £50 works by new graduates to £30,000 pieces by some of the biggest names.

This year 18,000 buyers flocked to view new exhibitors alongside established artists over the four-day event, with the amount of art purchased smashing the £1.1m mark.

Among this year’s highlights were a show by Glasgow gallery owner Victoria Cassidy, and the chance to buy work by internationally acclaimed artist David Mach. The celebrity art auction fetched over £4000 in aid of the Marie Curie Big Build Appeal to create a new hospice for the City.

Lord Provost Liz Cameron commented: “The Art Fair has been an essential part of Glasgow’s thriving cultural life for more than a decade.

“Once more the Art Fair has brought a wide range of galleries to the city presenting a fantastic selection of contemporary art for sale to buyers of every budget.

“I’m delighted to be able to say it is the biggest of its kind in the UK outside London.”

Related Links
www.glasgowartfair.com