5 Writing Tips from Tana French
“There’s no such thing as ‘men’ or ‘women’. There’s only the individual character you’re writing. One guy emailed me asking me how to write women, and I couldn’t answer, because I had no idea which woman he meant: me? Eleanor of Aquitaine? Lady Gaga? If you’re thinking of ‘men’ or ‘women’ as a monolithic group defined primarily by their sex, then you’re not thinking of them as individuals; so your character isn’t going to come out as an individual, but as a collection of stereotypes. Sure, there are differences between men and women on average – but you’re writing an individual, not an average. If your individual character is chatty on the phone or refuses to ask for directions, that needs to be because of who he or she is, not because of what he or she is. Write the person, not the genitalia.”
Writing prompt!
You open the mail and receive a letter from one of your favorite childhood toys, explaining what the toy has been up to all these years since you have moved on. Some of it comes as a shock to you. What’s even more shocking is the reason the toy is contacting you.
Your morning writing prompt
Memory and Place
Like fiction, good nonfiction narratives are often driven by description of place. Think of a place that you know well—your kitchen, your office, or a spot you often visit—and, from memory, write a passage that describes that place. Focus on the physical characteristics of the space, leaving out any emotion that may be connected to it, and be as descriptive and detailed as possible. The next time you’re there, read your description and see how accurately your memory served you. Take note of the details you may have missed.
via Poets & Writers
Typewriter t-shirt from Threadless
Why Talk Therapy Is on the Wane and Writing Workshops Are on the Rise
For all you tortured artists
When people ask why I became a writer, I tend to emphasize the era, in my mid-20s, when I turned off the television and became a more serious reader. I talk about the sentences of Saul Bellow and Lorrie Moore, how enraptured I was, how I wanted to emulate them. It makes for a nice story.
But it’s not the part of the story that really matters. What really matters, it seems to me now, is that I was bored with my job as a newspaper reporter and depressed. I was living in exile from my family and driving away the people I loved with an astonishing efficiency. What I needed was therapy.
-Steve Almond in the New York Times Magazine
15 Books That Should Be on Every Grammar Geek's Bookshelf
People writing “your” when they mean “you’re” makes you cringe. The song “The Way I Are” makes your hair stand on end. You can’t read user comments on websites anymore because you can feel brain cells dying off just trying to make sense of them. You, dear friend, are a grammar geek. As such, there are books that constitute required reading for those of your ilk. After you’re done editing this article, proceed to your nearest bookstore and purchase these must-have titles for rolling in the depths of grammar.
Creative nonfiction writing prompt
In her book A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Viking, 2005), Rebecca Solnit discusses the importance of allowing yourself to get lost—both in life and in writing—in order to become more fully conscious. The art of getting lost, she says, “is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.” Write about a time when you got lost—physically, emotionally, spiritually, or otherwise—and how getting lost, and perhaps embracing that loss, resulted in something new being found.
via Poets & Writers
Wordy Shadow Art by Fred Eerdekens
We all look at a piece of art and hear its hidden messages, but it’s rare that a work will whisper to you as directly as these shadow art creations by Fred Eerdekens. His sculptures and installations, in some cases very beautiful on their own, create art from the shadows, leaving messages on the wall in either negative or positive space, incorporating everything — the light, the shadow, the physical space, the wall behind it — into the artwork’s expression. Eerdekens’s work, which we first spotted over at DesignBoom, leaves us peering, wondering how he possibly figured out how to do that, before we sit back and enjoy it. If you’re lucky enough to be in Paris right now, a selection of Eerdekens’s work will be on display at the Magda Danysz Gallery beginning March 17. Otherwise, click through to see some of our favorites, and then be sure to check out Eerdekens’s website for even more.
Slideshow at Flavorwire
