by Jeff Goins |
I love memoir, always have. Anne Lamott, David Sedaris, Annie Dillard, even Stephen King. There’s something magical about the ability to transform ordinary circumstances into beautiful scenes that teach a deeper truth.
Twenty years ago, it seemed the only people qualified to write memoir were the incredibly famous and the I’m-so-disgustingly-rich-I’d-better-write-a-book elite. The rest of us had better keep our mouths shut… or turn our life’s story into a novel.
But recently, more “normal” people are writing powerful reflections on everyday life. So what’s to stop you and me from joining them?
by Joe Bunting |
I’m finally reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Nobel Prize Winning novel and one of the best selling books of all time. Gabriel García Marquez’s novel about a small village in Colombia has become the best known work of magic realism, a literary genre that blends detailed realism with elements that couldn’t possibly exist.
There are things I like and things I don’t like about the novel, but apart from personal taste, it quickly became clear to me García Márquez is a great writer, perhaps among the best writers alive (he’s eighty-six).
In this post, we will explore seven writing lessons we can learn from the Colombian master.
by Joe Bunting |
There have been too many days when I didn’t know what to write about. I sat here waiting… waiting… waiting, but nothing came to me.
I used to think that some mornings I just wasn’t meant to write anything. Inspiration did not visit me, and instead I wasted hours drinking cold coffee while staring blankly at my computer screen.
Well, frankly, that sucked. So I started something new.
by Joe Bunting |
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:
by Joe Bunting |
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).
by Joe Bunting |
Have you ever felt purposeless? Most people do at some point in life (e.g. teenage years, teenage wandering, mid-life crisis), and as a rule, it is generally considered to be a down point. But what if there’s good to be drawn out of purposelessness?
