Year: 2015
We all have bad habits as writers. Here’s my worst: I have a terrible tendency to back off on the money shot. Meaning I’ll fail to maximize the drama in key scenes. I know why I do this. It’s Resistance. Fear of success. Fear of making something really kick ass. But I still do it. Even knowing this is my Bad Tendency, I still go soft on the accelerator pedal. It’s a terrible habit. Here are two examples, both from my book Killing Rommel.
Read MoreLuther and Bobby stole their cousin’s new lawnmower. The plan: The cousin would file a claim. The insurance company would send a check. The cousin would split the check with Luther and Bobby. Luther and Bobby would return the lawnmower to the cousin. When their half-baked schemes weren’t landing them in jail, they were selling their plasma or sorting out other ways to make a dime. Gaming the system was the one thing they came by honestly. Their parents had been working the disability arena their entire lives. They were raised as gamers. Mama had the mad scamming skills of…
Read MorePeople write me letters sometimes. Wannabe musicians, aspiring novelists; I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. These letters purport to be seeking counsel. The writer details his or her struggles with deciding which creative field to pursue, their frustrations with their own indecisiveness, with getting their art going, etc. Then they ask for advice. Now, there’s a good way to ask for advice. The good way is when the person is earnest, sincere; he or she can, in truth, profit from a boost of encouragement or an impartial reality check. That’s the good kind of advice-asking. But that’s not…
Read MoreFor a while now, over at www.storygrid.com I’ve been writing about Malcolm Gladwell and his first book The Tipping Point. I’m doing something that I call “storygridding it.” And that’s just my short hand for creating a revealing infographic that a writer can look at lickety-split for inspiration. And if she gets stuck writing her Big Idea nonfiction book, she can look deeply into the data of the story grid. And that data will reveal how a fellow scribe solved the same problem that she’s battling.
Read MoreA boxer takes a haymaker to the jaw. He falls. He struggles to one knee as the ref stands over him, counting, ” … two, three, four … ” Watch the faces in the arena. They have become that fighter. He is living their life, their struggle.
Read More[I forgot about this post from Aug. 30, 2013, until I ran into Kevin Spacey’s speech again. Take a look and scroll down for Sir David Lean, too. For as much as things change, they stay the same. — Callie] At about the 1:20 mark in Kevin Spacey’s MacTaggart Lecture, given during the Edinburgh International Television Festival, he looks straight into the audience and says, “It’s the Creatives, Stupid.” It’s a television festival, so he keeps on the “television” theme, but that deeper thread is about change and taking risks. When facing one of his first offers for a television…
Read MoreI missed out on the self-esteem movement. My day was about twenty years too early. My generation was more like the Un-self-esteem movement. The Self-Disesteem Movement. We were constantly being told what bums and losers we were. Be a man! Suck it up! What’s wrong with you? Those were the child-rearing mantras that our parents, teachers, and coaches—the Greatest Generation—dished out to us. If you brought home a report card with straight A’s, the only question was, “Where are the A+s?” Personal validation became a big issue with my peers and me. I’m not sure where this topic sits with…
Read More[To read more of Shawn’s stuff, subscribe to www.storygrid.com] Last week I read something very exciting. It was a review of a book that I hadn’t read, nor did I know the author in any real way. Here it is. What was exciting was in the way that the writer absolutely ripped the work to shreds. The review was funny, intelligent, and somehow apologetic in the way that the reviewer went about his surgical eviscerating. As if he didn’t really want to be doing what he was doing, but owed it to the public to reveal the fraudulent and shameful…
Read MoreYears ago I rented a little house in Northern California and went there to write. I left New York, resolved to finish a book or kill myself trying. (I wrote about this period in The War of Art.) The great part about that time—it lasted about eighteen months—was that I had nothing to do all day but write. True, the chore was Sisyphean. I was busting my butt trying to learn not just how to put words on paper but, far harder and more critical, how to finish something. How to wrap up. How to ship. Still, life during that…
Read MoreBack in 1964, when Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was published, Mike Teavee’s obsession with being on TV, led to him exiting the scene with this Oompa Loompa sung verse (add “adults” to the mix every time you see the word “children” and substitute “TV” with “social media”): “The most important thing we’ve learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set– Or better still, just don’t install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we’ve been, We’ve watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge…
Read MoreFREE MINI COURSE
Start with this War of Art [27-minute] mini-course. It's free. The course's five audio lessons will ground you in the principles and characteristics of the artist's inner battle.
