I’m going to a wedding tomorrow, the first I’ve been to this spring, and I thought it would be fun to write about weddings.
Write about a wedding, a wedding in your work in progress, a wedding you’ve been to, or your own wedding.
Write for fifteen minutes. When you’re time is up, post your practice in the comments section. And if you post, be sure to give feedback on a few practices by other writers.
Have fun!
I recently finished reading Haruki Murakami’s trilogy 1Q84, and it left me with mixed feelings. If you’re to compare any of his previous novels to 1Q84, you’ll be quite surprised. It’s different from the familiar Murakami topics, and his tone and voice have changed in this work too.
Avoiding a description of the content and putting personal preferences aside, there is much to be learned from the Japanese master’s latest work (even though he lost the Nobel race). So here are the lessons I’ve pulled out:
People often say becoming a parent teaches you a lot about yourself and about life. For me, it’s also taught me how to be a better writer.
These five lessons have stayed with me, and crossed over to my life as a writer…
I wrote this in fifteen minutes.
How fast can you write? Most new writers slog over their writing. They spend minutes writing a single sentence. They stare at the screen, composing sentences in their heads. Yes, some pros do that too, but as a group, professional writers write fast (or at least faster than you).
Sometimes when you’re writing, you get so caught up in where your story is going that you’ve forgotten a few details that you previously established at the beginning of your book.
Sometimes those details are smaller, like having a character approach your protagonist from behind when you’ve established that the protagonist is on the top row of the stadium bleachers, and there is no way you can sneak up on them from behind. Sometimes those details are bigger, like a previously-unbeatable monster suddenly being dispatched with ease with a butter knife.
These inconsistencies are called plot holes.
