Tag: writing craft

Posted in Journals, Writing craft, Writing rituals

Blogging as writing practice

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

Just like athletes and dancers, those of us who call ourselves writers need to “practice” our craft and “warm up” before embarking on a new piece of work.

Whenever I’m faced with the prospect of a brand new writing project and find myself sitting in front of that blank computer screen, fingers poised over the keys, I need to feel that I am in practice and that I’m warmed up to begin properly.  So, how do writers practice when they’re not writing something destined for publication in one way or another?  And how do we warm up for the task at hand?

Over the years, many writers have simply kept journals.  I’ve done that myself and I continue to do it.  I love my journals as any of my regular readers know. I have journals for a wide variety of things.  But they do serve me two very different purposes.

The first purpose is for me to have a place to write down ideas as they come to me.  Most writers do this and these days many will do it electronically on IPhones and IPads or other electronic devices.  I do this as well, but for me there is nothing like my nice pen and my Moleskine journal(s).

What kind of book notes & ideas reside in this journal? Hmm...

The second purpose for me in keeping journals is for writing practice.  Writing guru Natalie Goldberg says, “It’s good to go off and write a novel, but don’t stop doing writing practice.  It is what keeps you in tune…”[1]  I’ve always loved her approach to writing practice; keep your hand moving.  That works fine when I use a pen and notebook, but it’s not so useful when I’m at a keyboard.  Maybe it should be, but it isn’t.  That’s where blogging comes in for me.

Just like everyone else out there, when blogging first started to become a force, I started a blog.  I thought that I could use the blog to make some of the work I do at the university available to a wider audience – but I wasn’t committed to it, and as I look back on the exercise now, I think I really wanted to learn the technical aspects of blogging more than I wanted it to be good pieces of writing.  But blogging can be that practice Natalie talks about.

Consider this: if you are a writer, you need to write every day – or at least those five days a week that you devote to “work.” (I know, some of your friends don’t think you’re actually working when all you seem to be doing is sitting at home diddling away on the computer – my mother thinks that if I’m not in front of a class or at a meeting, I must not be working.  I wonder where she thinks those books come from?)  But you don’t always have a big project – and sometimes when you do, all you seem to be able to do is stare at that blank screen.  This is where blogging as writing practice comes in.

Blogging, however, can only be a practice if you are committed to it.  This means that you commit to writing almost every day and posting at least every week or two.  But do you have to make your every blogged thought available to the masses?  In a word, NO!

Not every blog has or needs to have an audience.  You can actually blog away with your settings set on private.  It does not need to be searchable by the Googles of the world.

For most people, blogging requires an idea that triggers a personal response that then becomes the basis of a blog post that begs for reader response.  Blogging in this scenario is a very public activity that begs for that dialogue.  Blogging as writing practice, on the other hand, does not need an idea, or an angle.  It does not need an audience, and certainly doesn’t need any feedback.  It just needs the writer to begin with a word or two – such as “I remember…” as suggested by Natalie Goldberg – and fingers to the keyboard, repeating that two words every time the ideas stop flowing.  What’s very important here is that what you write doesn’t even have to be good – it just has to be.

This is how I justify spending time on this and my other blog – the other blog is one that chronicles my other passion – travel.  They started out as ways simply to practice and warm-up before a big project.  They have, obviously, evolved.  That’s the nice thing about writing practice (even in your journals): you never know where they might lead.  They just don’t need to have an objective at the outset.  Happy blogging!

The Common Craft video reminds us that blogs are “news” of the 21st century – but as writers, we know better.  Blogs can be anything we want!

[1] Goldberg, Natalie. (1986, 2005). Writing Down the bones.  Shambhala Publications, p. 17.

Posted in Creativity, Writing craft

Putting pen (or pencil) to paper

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons

Do you ever write with a pen and paper?  Hmm?  Or are you forever hunched over the computer keyboard like most writers these days? If you only ever write at a computer keyboard, I think you might be missing out.  Stay with me for a few moments all you tweeters.

I wrote a guest piece for our students’ new online newsletter Symmetry recently on the topic of creativity and how it can be leveraged in fields other than the traditional “creatives.”  Some people think that writing creative pieces needs to be done by putting pen to paper – literally.

Ever since I discovered her work in the late 1980’s, I have considered Natalie Goldberg to be one of my major writing teachers.  I’ve never met Natalie Goldberg.  My writing is not one bit like Natalie Goldberg’s writing.  But her early books on writing practice, most notably Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, were my signposts along the journey toward finding my own voice as a writer.  And although I’m seriously dedicated to writing while hunched over a keyboard, Natalie’s approach to teaching writing has often given me pause to consider if there is a difference in the extent to which we  might be able to mine our creativity when inputting words to a computer versus letting them flow onto paper through our writing hand.

Natalie’s approach to writing is that it is a ‘practice,’ and that by practicing, we improve our writing.  We don’t have to publish everything we write.  Writing is often for ourselves only.  (To tell you the truth, I often read material that I wish the writer had kept to him or herself!)

I’ve talked about Nataile’s timed writing approach in previous posts, but her ideas bear further reflection.  She tells us to just “go!” and “keep your hand moving!”  That’s where the pen and paper thing comes in—you can’t do this kind of practice with a computer.

She also tells us to “lose control.”  This is easier said than done, but I believe that this is how we mine our personal creativity. As writers, we put pen to paper and if we’re able to lose control and keep the writing hand moving, interesting ideas just seem to flow.

Lee Rourke wrote a terrific piece in The Guardian’s book blog recently.  In it he refers to longhand writing as a “secretive pleasure.”  He says he “can sit in a corner of a café unnoticed and write to my heart’s content. I’m less conspicuous than the iBook brigade, cluttering up London coffee houses and pubs with their flashy technologies.”

Of course, my personal obsession with writing journals is related to the notion of putting pen to paper.  Sometimes it’s just nice to sit in a comfortable chair and think.  Then pick up that journal and just write.  Okay, I will admit that these days I often pick up my IPad and do this, but to tell you the truth, it’s not the same.  I highly recommend a good dose of the Natalie Goldberg approach to writing practice – with that pen firmly planted on a piece of paper that (preferably) is contained in a beautiful notebook.

Posted in Cross-writing, Genres, Writing books, Writing craft

Writing across genres

Posted on by Patricia J. Parsons
So many genres...so little time.

It may come as something of a surprise to students I’ve had over the years – those who have have sat in my classes to learn about communication ethics or strategy – but I began my unexpected academic career as a writing teacher.  I never intended to be a university professor.

I had always been interested in teaching and thought that it was probably one of my strengths.  I had done it for several years in a previous incarnation – I taught anatomy & physiology, ethics and human sexuality (!) to nursing students before my career evolved into health and medical communication, leading eventually to writing books and teaching in the area of communication (public relations to be specific).  But I went to the university initially as a writer who could teach writing.

The first course I taught (before I ever considered teaching full-time) was called “Print Media.”  There is no such course with that title any longer, but its descendent “Text-Based Media” comes close.  I also taught news and feature writing and persuasive writing after the then-chairman of the department talked me into applying for a full-time job.  But I never intended to stay.

That was 23 years ago!  So, what’s the lesson here?

For me, it means that our skill sets can cross many disciplines – and in writing can cross different genres.  But writing across genres has two different meanings.  First, let’s talk about individual writers writing across genres; then we’ll talk about those genres that cross genres themselves.

When I was trying to create copy for my web site, it occurred to me that this was, in fact the hallmark of my writing: I am a bit of a switch-hitter.  As I say on my home page…

…Goethe is said to have opined that every author in some way portrays himself [sic] in his works, even if it be against his [sic] will. For someone who writes in a variety of genres, this is either a symptom of some kind of mental confusion – or perhaps the hallmark of an interesting personality. I’d like to think that, in this case, it’s the latter…

The bottom line is that I started my writing career as a medical writer.  Skills honed there took me into medical communication which morphed into communication in general – most of my past work has been writing about health and corporate  communication.  But, I’m a writer.  To me that means that I can use my skills to write anything that takes my fancy.  I decided to move into creative non-fiction and wrote my memoir, then took my research skills into an area that I love to read – historical fiction.

In my view, writers, like everyone else, have individual strengths – and my strengths are probably not the same as yours.  I think it’s important to know what those strengths are and see how you can use them across genres.  For example, my meticulous research skills, honed in the areas of non-fiction, have been enormously useful to me in moving into historical fiction. Story-telling is also a strength that many of us have – it’s a skill that is important both to non-fiction (creative or otherwise) as well as to fiction writers.

The second way that you can think about the concept of “writing across genres” is the notion that there are discrete categories of writing, and to create  a mash-up, to use the current parlance, is to create a cross-genre genre.  Make sense?

Here’s my example: I have a secret – I sometimes read chick lit and I’m not apologizing for it.  Since I like a bit of escapist reading from time to time, and only if it’s well-written like some chick lit is, I am also interested in creating some of my own.  But I don’t want to be formulaic.  So, I’ve taken my interest in travel and travel writing and put it together with my interest in chick lit and I’m writing a travel chick lit book.  Is this a cross-genre?  Maybe, but who’s to say?  Who is the arbiter of what is and is not a genre?  And who says that because my book is funny, with a young, modern woman as the protagonist, that it’s chick lit anyway?  Maybe it’s just women’s literature – ooh, that sounds a lot better for a university prof-type, doesn’t it?

In any case, cheers to coming up with your own genres and writing whatever moves you.