Uses of Language

At the Hoover Institution website is an article about George Orwell, his use of language, and why the preservation and use of the English language is important. The article is titled "Orwell's Instructive Errors" and was written by Liam Julian.

The article discusses what Orwell had to say in his essays about the use of language and also how Orwell himself used language in some of his writings. One of the essays referred to is "Politics and the English Language".

These two pieces are of interest for political reasons, but also for the use of both readers and writers.

I don't agree with everything Liam Julian said. For example, in the following paragraph he seems to think right-wing extremists are the same as conservatives, which is assuredly not true.

It is, certainly, not only denizens of the left who theorize and euphemize their way out of inconvenient situations. The staunchest apologists for the worst elements of British Empire were conservatives, and now, as in Orwell’s time, it is conservatives who lean most heavily on theory to explain away indigence and squalor as inevitable in a free society and thereby rid themselves of responsibility to alleviate the burdens of the impoverished. Certainly America’s foremost racists are found on the right, and they have all sorts of theories. And yet such justifications — whether of racism, imperialism, neglect of the poor, or even creationism — currently have but parochial appeal. The left is in power now, and so it is that today’s most influential and worrisome euphemizing comes from the left.

Regarding racism in particular, it is people like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and, yes, Barack and Michelle Obama who keep racism most alive in America. They are not found on the right in America. Nonetheless, the article has some interesting things to say about the uses of language.

From the Archives: Historical Research for Your Writing

If you are interested in writing about places and times not your own, you might find Times and Places a helpful site to visit. The link is to a page with some general articles at the top, followed by more specific groups of links. Try it out and see if it works for you!

At A Celebration of Women Writers you can find writings from women throughout time and all over the world. I've only begun to look at it myself, but it looks like enough reading to keep you busy for a long time! Like at Times and Places linked above, you may find information and ideas here to help your own writing.

Are there one or two websites about literature and/or writing that you really like? Feel free to leave an url in the comments!

One Writer's View

In 1946 George Orwell published an essay called "Why I Write". In it, he discusses why writing is important for him and what it involves. I thought you might like to read the essay and see what you think. How does what he says differ from your own thoughts about why you write?

Watching Trends in Book Publishing

Presumably, we are all thinking of being published some day. Although we usually don't write in a certain genre just to increase our chances of being published, it doesn't hurt to keep an eye on current trends in book publishing so that we know what's selling and what's not. It also helps to learn what category our writing might fall into.

One good place to check is Publisher's Weekly, a source for current news in the book world. An example of the kind of article you can run across there is "When Love is Strange: Romance Continues its Affair with the Supernatural". This piece is mostly about romance novels, but also touches on urban fantasy. Take a look at the main page at the first link above to get an idea of all they cover.

Why Writers Write

Here is an interesting site with 182 articles about why writers write. It is fascinating to read all the different viewpoints. It may also help you figure out why you want to write and figure out what kind of writing will best help you meet your goals.

Why Writers Write

Enjoy!

Writing a Novel

Finding Ideas for a Short Story

A Fresh New Year

It's a fresh new year for all of us writers! Take a little time to make some plans and set some goals for your writing in 2009.

One thing you can do is write every day. Write in a journal, work on a story or essay, try different types of poetry.

Another thing is to read every day. Read widely, not just in the genre you want to write in. The more you learn, the more ideas will be floating around in your brain to draw upon. You might stumble across a historical incident that you could base a short story on, or read an essay that sparks an idea for a novel.

A third thing is to practice observing life around you. Whatever your circumstances, you can improve your observations about people, places, and things. Practice writing descriptions of what you observe.

You also might want to set a goal of submitting a short story, poem, or essay to a magazine (mainstream or literary). Read up on submission guidelines for the places you want to submit. Read sample issues (often you can read some samples of what the publication uses online or read sample issues at the library, thus doing your research for free).

You'll be able to think of other things you can do to further your writing. Make it a productive year!

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

What Christmas books do you enjoy most this time of year? I love to read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I have linked to one place it can be found on the internet, at Page by Page Books.

Being something of an Anglophile, I enjoy the book for its detailed descriptions of daily life at Christmas time. Overall, though, the book's pleasure comes from watching a man grow from selfishness to generosity. An overarching theme of change can raise a book from an ordinary level of entertainment to a memorable story that can inspire those who read it. This is something to strive for in our own writing.

Christmas time provides an inspiring message all its own and leads many people to change and improvement. Reading Luke 2 in the Bible's New Testament is one of my favorite things to do. Going to the source for the Christmas story provides the ultimate inspiration.

What are your favorites in Christmas reading?

From the Archives: "Sensible" Writing

When writing the description of a scene, don't just tell what it looks like. Descriptions of things that can be seen are important to the reader--it helps their imagination to picture what you are describing. Don't stop there, though.

What sounds would you hear in that place and time? Would there be traffic noise, people chatting, thunder booming, dishes clattering? How about birds singing or leaves crunching as someone walks over them?

Then there are smells. Do you smell food cooking? Are you describing a gas station and is the smell of gas wafting on the air? In a garden, can you smell flowers or mulch or fresh cut grass?

Is there tasting involved? Is a character eating a meal or trying a new food? Is there something that tastes sweet, sour, salty, or bitter? Is there an awful smell that leaves an acrid taste in your mouth?

How about touching? Does something feel smooth, rough, wet, dry, hot, cold? Is there a cat with soft fur or a dog with wiry hair?

Those kinds of descriptions can add so much to your scenes. It can give a sense of realism, a sense of "you are there". See what you can do by adding just a little extra--don't overdo it, of course. You wouldn't want to cram in all five senses in every scene, but a little something besides just what can be seen might make all the difference in how right your descriptions feel.

Writing Tutorial in 3 Videos

You can go to YouTube and search "writing fiction" to get some interesting videos with good information about writing. I found a series of three videos (about 9 minutes each) summarizing Jack M. Bickham's writing book, The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them). These are entertaining and will give you some good tips, too.

Reflections on Writing

One thing that helps me a lot with all aspects of writing is to read books about writing. Not only do I learn about the technical aspects of writing, but I often come across some inspiration and ideas for writing I would like to do.

Ideas come from all sorts of places, sometimes unexpectedly. It's good to be open to these ideas and to note them down in a notebook. It's impossible to remember everything, so writing it down helps a great deal and gives you a source to reflect on when you are stumped.

Unless you are writing solely for your own entertainment, or that of your family and friends, which is a perfectly legitiment reason for writing, you will eventually need to learn about how to go about being published. A recent podcast from The Writing Show can give you some pointers about this. The title is "What do Publishers Want from Query Letters and Proposals?" and the editor interviewed is Jennifer Silva Redmond. I found it a very helpful podcast. You can also peruse their various archives for more help and inspiration.

Input of various kinds can help your output considerably.

On Writing and Reading

Today's writing link: SpecFicWorld Lots of resources and articles about writing for your perusal.

I am still wandering around somewhat on this blog, but I hope my links have at least given you lots of writing tips and ideas for your own writing. I don't feel ready to share my own writing. That wasn't my original idea for this blog--sharing writing tips was. I'm not sure that is interesting enough, though, so we shall see.

I do encourage you to read lots of different types of writing. That will go a long way in helping you to decide what type(s) of writing you would like to do. Right now, I am reading The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. It is what you might call a literary murder mystery. Set in Canada in the 1860s, it is written in a different style than I am used to, but is not so far out as to be difficult to follow. I am only about halfway through, so I don't know yet if I will recommend it totally, but so far so good! The author switches back and forth between characters and uses present tense quite a bit. There is a first person narrator for parts of the book, but the author takes us often to third person narrative for some of the other characters.

Some Really Good Writing Tips

Would you like some really good writing tips? Ones with examples? I found some at Segullah, a Mormon women's literary journal.

On this page, you will find not only information about their essay contest and their poetry contest, but scroll down a bit and you will find "Writing Tips" with 7 blog posts giving some excellent tips for writing essays and poetry and for finding ideas. For example, in "Unleash Your Inner Poet!" you will find five examples of how not to write poetry. If you aren't sure what is meant by sing-songy verse, sentimental poetry, rhetorical poetry, didactic poetry, or obscure poetry, you will find examples of those here. In "The Beginning from the End", you will find examples of essay beginnings and endings that show you how you can improve those in your own writing. Read all 7 blog posts and see if you find tips that will help you with your writing, no matter where you intend to submit it.

While you're there, look around Segullah and do some reading. There's a lot of good writing there!

Writing and Voting

We have an important election day coming up on 4 November. I urge everyone to study the issues and the candidates, local and state and national, and vote, using your best thinking.

Whatever the outcome of Tuesday's election, I also urge everyone to contact your representatives at all levels of government and let them know what you expect of them as they govern on our behalf.

Think of it as writing practice as you send emails to all!

"Wisdom From a Long Writing Career"

Do you need some encouragement and inspiration? Check out this podcast at The Writing Show.

"Wisdom From a Long Writing Career" an interview with Maralys Wills.

Maralys Wills is a longtime writer who has written many different types of things. See if you find something for yourself in her interview.

Learning about Shakespeare

I have found a website that you might enjoy. It's called Shakespeare Criticism. I have just begun to look through it, but it appears to be full of information and links that will help you to gain greater insight to Shakespeare's writings and, in the process, accumulate ideas for themes and approaches to your own writing.

Essays and Articles

The Writing Show has a podcast called "Writing the Personal Essay" that you might enjoy. The guest is Sheila Bender and she talks about different aspects of writing personal essays.

While you are educating yourself on politics and economics with all the current crises, you might want to take the time to notice how the reporters and pundits structure their articles and essays and how they reference their sources. It will help you with your own writing.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

Perhaps you have heard of this. It's a contest for bad writing! Edward George Bulwer-Lytton wrote a famous sentence in his novel Paul Clifford. Here is the sentence:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

The first phrase of this sentence is the one with which Snoopy, of "Peanuts" fame, starts his famous novel.

Every year a contest is held to find a writer who can write a bad opening to a novel, and this website describes the contest and has links to some of the winners and to news articles about the contest.

Read it for fun, and perhaps you will be inspired to enter the contest yourself!

The Search for Writing Ideas

There are several things you can do to help you get ideas of what to write about and what types of writing you want to try your hand at. One thing is to think about what you enjoy reading--novels? short stories? essays? poetry? Do you like mysteries? Nature writing? Biographies? History? This alone will give you an idea of what you would most enjoy working on and would be a great place to start. If you enjoy reading mystery novels, try your hand at writing one. If you enjoy nature poetry or history essays, try writing those.

Another idea starter is to read brief blurbs about what a movie or book is about--Amazon is a good place to start. Sometimes those little blurbs can sound quite intriguing and give you an idea for a novel, poem, or essay. It won't be at all like the book or movie the blurb was for because you'll give it your own twist and write it the way you would like to see it written.

Still another place for harvesting ideas is in the literature of other countries. Google Japanese literature or Spanish literature or whatever country or region strikes your fancy. Read a little literary history to see what they wrote about. Mix and match with other ideas you've come across. How about a Spanish mystery novel or a Japanese nature essay?

News stories can give you ideas, too. Do you see a mention of a country that sounds interesting? How about a profession? It doesn't necessarily have to be the main topic of the news story--it can be a brief mention of a small detail in the story that makes you curious.

Just some things to think about as you search for writing ideas.