August 29, 2007 by Lani Voivod, Chief Scribbler.

“Writing is easy. It’s putting one word in front of the other and not being stupid about it.”

-Wise words shared by one of my very favorite writers of all time: My LOVE, my business partner, my inspiration, and the father of my boys…Allen Voivod.

Posted in Quill Quotes | No Comments »

August 23, 2007 by Lani Voivod, Chief Scribbler.

(An abridged essay by cultural columnist Michael Ventura, originally published in LA Weekly May 21-27, 1993.)

This essay in its entirety is powerful, yet it pulls no punches about writing as a lifelong, full-time endeavor. Because my goal with this ezine is to inspire you and not scare or intimidate the dickens out of you, I’ve pared the original 1800+ word essay to less than 500 words. Now the choice to go deeper is yours, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. As always, the bolding below is mine – sort of like an act of public service for the Wild Quills audience.

Writing is something you do alone in a room.

Copy that sentence and put it on your wall because there’s no way to exaggerate or overemphasize this fact. It’s the most important thing to remember if you want to be a writer. Writing is something you do alone in a room.

Before any issues of style, content or form can be addressed, the fundamental questions are: How long can you stay in that room? How many hours a day? How do you behave in that room? How often can you go back to it? How much fear (and, for that matter, how much elation) can you endure by yourself? How many years—how many years—can you remain alone in a room?

…Nobody can teach you how you, in particular, are going to behave when you’re alone for hours a day over long periods of time trying to deal with unknown quantities: what you have to express, what experience your expression draws on, how that experience relates to the solitude necessary for its expression, the form in which it comes out (which is never quite the form you planned on), how that form changes as it progresses, and, most important, who you are—all these are just a few of the unknown quantities that are locked up with you in your room.

…The room, you see, is a dangerous place. Not in itself, but because you’re dangerous. The psyche is dangerous. Because working with words is not like working with color or sound or stone or movement. Color and sound and stone and movement are all around us, they are natural elements, they’ve always been in the universe, and those who work with them are servants of these timeless materials. But words are pure creations of the human psyche. Every single word is full of secrets, full of associations. Every word leads to another and another and another, down and down, through passages of dark and light. Every single word leads, in this way, to the same destination: your soul. Which is, in part, the soul of everyone. Every word has the capacity to start that journey. And once you’re on it, there is no knowing what will happen.

Locking yourself up with such things, letting them stir, using these pure psychic creations as raw material, and deciding, each time, how much or little you’re going to participate in your own act of creation, just what you’ll stake, what are the odds, just how far are you going to go—that’s called being a writer. And you do it alone in a room.

-Michael Ventura, excerpted from his essay, “The Talent of the Room.” Like to read some of Mr. Ventura’s work? You’ll find a great archive of his essays (more than 170 of them!) right here.

Teacher, writer, and Wild Quills charter member Sandy LaRochelle brought this Ventura piece to a Wild Quills meeting. Thanks, Sandy!

Posted in Li'l Ditties by Famous Scribes | No Comments »

August 22, 2007 by Lani Voivod, Chief Scribbler.

The following is an article by Marcia Yudkin, a prolific writer, author, speaker, and marketing guru I’ve been following (and learning from!) since the turn of the century.

Marcia sends out a free weekly email newsletter called “The Marketing Minute.” I highly recommend it - for both its information and its style. Marcia knows how to pack brief anecdotes, stats, opinions, and guidance in less than 200 words. She’s really in her own league.

I’m sharing this particular article because I, too, am always amazed by how many writers leave their writing talent in the hands of others’ opinions, as if their talent and potential is a finite and one-time-only quantifiable measurement set in stone.

If you’re one of those people, please….STOP THAT RIGHT NOW! Write regularly for a stint - whether it’s once a week for three months, or once a week for a year, or every day for 60 days - and experiment with different styles, writing exercises, techniques, etc. Read a few good books on writing. (Check out the resources in the “A Muse U Can Use” and “Craft Caddy” categories of this blog for some recommendations.)

At the end of your stint, set an Artist’s Date for yourself and re-read what you’ve done. I’ll bet you $100 you’ll notice you’ve “magically attracted” more talent to your work!

“TALENT SCHMALENT!”

by Marcia Yudkin

Over the years, many people have asked me to look at their writing. “I need to know, do I have talent or not,” they say.Their request is seriously flawed, I’d reply. Anyone can become a better writer. When I taught English 101 at various colleges, I saw proof of this. Students with hackneyed, half-dead writing turned in lively, interesting essays by the end of the semester.

According to Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck, I was right to question the query about talent. Dweck’s book, Mind-set: The New Psychology of Success, reports research showing that in education, the arts and business, people who believe talent is fixed and inborn do not fully develop their potential and do not recover easily from setbacks.

Those who believe talent can be developed, regardless of apparent starting point, not only achieve more but also prompt greater achievement in their children and staff.

Her best news: You can change your mind-set about talent or intelligence. In only two months, kids who were taught that the brain, like a muscle, improves with exercise saw their math scores rocket from F’s to B’s.

Posted in A Muse U Can Use | No Comments »

August 11, 2007 by Lani Voivod, Chief Scribbler.

“Creative work is…a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”

-Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art

Posted in Quill Quotes | No Comments »

August 2, 2007 by Lani Voivod, Chief Scribbler.

Ever experienced one of those divine situations in which the perfect book magically appears in your hands? Don’t you love when that happens?

That’s how I came Steven Pressfield’s book. The timing was especially synchronistic because I was midway through an Artist’s Way cycle with a group of creative friends. One of the guys went to UCLA’s annual “Festival of Books” and came back with an “Advance Reader’s Copy” for each of us. Boy, that was a great day!

In this short yet vital guide, best-selling author Steven Pressfield (of The Legend of Bagger Vance fame) brings us through these tiny little chapters – some of them only two or three sentences long! – on that invasive scoundrel known as RESISTANCE (”Book One: Defining the Enemy”). He then moves to COMBATTING RESISTANCE (”Book Two: Turning Pro”), and finally brings us to BEYOND RESISTANCE (”Book Three: The Higher Realm”).

Rather than tell you about the book, I’m including three teaser quotes here:

From a chapter entitled THE UNLIVED LIFE: “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

From a chapter entitled A PROFESSIONAL IS PATIENT: “Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: it uses her own enthusiasm against her. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. It knows we can’t sustain that level of intensity. We will hit a wall. We will crash.”

From a chapter entitled APPROACHING THE MYSTERY: “…[W]hen we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.”

Glory, glory, Hallelujah! My hunch is you’ll make room on your shelves for this beauty faster than you can say, “Break Through the Block and Win Your Inner Creative Battle,” which happens to be the new subheader for the edition pictured above.

Posted in A Muse U Can Use | No Comments »