To: All You Writers.
Frm: Julianna Baggott
My advice is simple. You go out and get it. If you think you’re going to just wait for inspiration to strike you, you’re sunk. It’s over. As the old proverb goes: If there is no wind, row. I row. I row every day. I row even when there is wind so I’m making double-time.
Inspiration is a luxury I can’t afford. It’s not blue collar. It’s not white collar. It’s feather collar.
The thing you really want to hope for is that you like to row. In fact, it’s all the better if you love to row, if you love the calluses and the sore shoulders, if you love the circling gulls, and the vicious things — the waters are teeming with vicious things.
Workshop? Yes. There are vicious things there — with big jaws, rows of teeth. But all the better to love the jaws and teeth.
What I’m saying is that you can’t pick and choose. You have to love it all — or at least accept it all. If you’re writing for praise, it’s over. If you’re writing for love only, close up shop. But if you love to write, then row on.
It’s the thing I know how to do.
Do you want something more practical? Of course you do.
You want me to tell you agents and editors, about graduate school, about short cuts.
I don’t know any short cuts.
Except maybe this: Rejection.
Have a good relationship with rejection. Getting demoralized about rejection is the long cut. It wastes your time more than anything.
Instead get a little fiery about it and bring the fire back to the boat.
You want me say something about revision.
It’s just that: you see the work again. You see it again. New. You re-see it.
And then you write that vision.
You want me to say something about craft, point of view, tense, structure, characterization and plot.
You’ll learn these things. Stop reading for pleasure and take some things apart. It’s all in there. Every lesson you need to learn is in everything you’ve ever loved to read.
You want me to say something elevated.
But you already know what you need to do.
You’ve already told yourself the truth.
Write it.
Julianna Baggot is the author of Girl Talk, The Anibodies, and Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees, among many other titles. She also co-founded Kids In Need-Books In Deed, a non-profit organization which provides underpriveledged children with free books. Find out how to contribute at http://www.booksindeed.org/.
more from shell point..
sunset @ shell point
shell point, a bit outside Tallahassee
Without music, life would be a mistake.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
A Conversation with John Updike - Video Library - The New York Times
if you’re interested, click through to see an 8 minute vid from october 2008 featuring Updike’s thoughts on the “craft of fiction and the art of writing”.
Welcome to the Kudzu Blog
Hi, this is the first post for the Kudzu Blog for FSU. Future posts will include staff articles, news, and whatever random bits of interestingness that we decide to share.
