Just about every writer wants to become more prolific. If many of us had the choice, we’d quite are day jobs and lock ourselves in our rooms for the better part of the day to devote to writing. Sadly, this remains just a fantasy. We have other responsibilities that include family, jobs, social engagements, errands to run and the many other mundane details that fill our lives.

Just your imagination
But being a prolific writer doesn’t have to be a dream, nor do you have to suffer from hypergraphia to write large quantities of material. Having an active imagination helps, although it’s not a direct requirement. How can this be? Isn’t writing fiction and poetry fully dependent on imagination? Well, yes and no. It takes imagination to come up with story ideas and work out character and plot details. There’s no doubt about that. But actual writing is more of a matter of discipline and perspiration (ie. hard work).

The process of writing is creative one. When you physically start to put words onto paper to create sentences, and those sentences then create paragraphs and so on, until you have a completed manuscript, you are performing a creative act. Creativity begets creativity. So even if you are not, or don’t think you are, creative enough to be a writer, you will start to become more creative as you write more. In other words, creativity can be gained and is not inherent in finite quantities in our brains.

Continue Reading

Most people know about writer’s block, a condition where one cannot squeeze a word out of their pen or keyboard if their life depended on it. But the pendulum also swings the other way. There’s a little discussed ailment called hypergraphia – the obsessive urge to write.

When I say "obsessive urge to write" I’m not talking about someone who writes for a few hours a day because it’s his/her job, or even a person who has lots of good ideas buzzing around. No, I’m talking about someone whose compulsion to write is so great, that the person cannot control it and they cross the line from just being "creative" to having a real mental disorder.

I first heard about hypergraphia in a philosophy class I was taking and we got sidetracked discussing an upcoming essay that was due. Many of us in the class tended to write longer essays than what was required (it was an upper-level class) and the professor wondered if any of us suffered from this strange disease.

Continue Reading

I don’t think there’s any other word in the English language that can stir up such passionate feelings among writers and the publishing world at large as the word plagiarism can. And for an honest writer accused of plagiarism, I think death might be a more preferable fate, as with the latter a writer doesn’t have to suffer through the humiliation of defending his/her own work from accusations that parts of it (or worse, the entire manuscript) has been copied from another source.

But one article, in discussing the controversy surrounding Southern Illinois University’s (SIU) President Glenn Poshard plagiarized various sections of his doctoral thesis, brings up the broader point of how plagiarism should be defined. While on the surface this appears to be a straightforward issue, digging a little deeper shows that plagiarism is not very clear-cut at all. As the article points out, there are three different types of plagiarism:

By the time the task force was finished equivocating, though, the faculty committee reviewing Poshard’s dissertation had plenty of wiggle room to declare the president guilty of "inadvertent plagiarism" — carelessness, in other words. This is not to be confused with "uneducated plagiarism," which suggests the writer truly didn’t know better, or "intentional plagiarism," which might as well be defined as stealing someone else’s work and admitting it once you’re caught.

Continue Reading

Call it one of my pet peeves, but I really hate it when, after letting someone read a work of fiction that I have written, the first question they ask is: "Is this based on your own life?" Why do I hate that question so much? Because if it’s obviously a work of fiction, then no, it’s not based on any part of my life. If a short story resembles my life, it is purely coincidence and nothing I planned ahead of time.

However, before I continue, I will add that such a question about the connection between a piece of fiction and the author’s life is not totally irrelevant. There is an entire line of literary criticism that asks that precise question, and then goes on to interpret the work based on the author’s life and the events surrounding his/her life. I have always had a strong distaste for such criticism because it only goes skin deep and relies on arbitrary connections.

Continue Reading

This is a question I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Why do I write? Let’s face it, the life of a writer can be tough, especially if you’re trying to make a living at it. And if you write fiction or poetry, don’t quite your day job just yet.

Okay, so let’s say you do managed to get published and earn a meager living composing words. Unlike a rock star, you won’t have groupies or roadies catering to your every need. You won’t have autograph hounds camping on the street next to your house. You will probably even be able to go to the store without anyone recognizing you. Then, to top it all off, writing is such a solitary activity that I guarantee you won’t have thousands of screaming fans urging you on as you pen that new bestselling novel.

Now that we’ve established most writers (even successful ones) go without the money and fame (yes, there are always exceptions), let’s strip all that away. Forget about money and fame and just concentrate on the writing part. For one thing, writing is hard work. It takes a lot of energy to maintain the level of creativity need to write an entire short story, or even a novel!  Furthermore, the urge to only write when feeling "inspired" is almost unbearable at times (I fall into this trap more than I care to admit).

For the sake of this post I won’t even go into doubting your own abilities, self-critiquing, the agony of writer’s block and the uncountable other maladies writers tend to suffer.

Continue Reading

At first glance, the 2 different writing contests sponsored by Amazon.com and Borders seemed like a good idea. That’s what I thought yesterday when I first read the article and wrote my original post (Writing contests gain steam online). But after doing some thinking, I’m just a little bit wary of these contests.

So instead of writing a long and drawn out manifesto against these literary contests, I’ll just make a list of a few problems I can think of. This list is in no particular order:

1. Why is Penguin co-sponsoring a literary contest to find an "unknown" author? I thought large publishing houses, such as Penguin, have mountains of submissions in their "slush pile" written by unknown authors. Maybe the slush pile ran dry. It just seems odd that they’re suddenly taking a different route to find another book to publish.

Continue Reading

The power of the internet is being used to try to find the next top novel! According to a Yahoo! News article some major players in bookselling are also getting involved in the search. Amazon, the online mega-store with humble beginnings selling only books, is partnering up with the Penguin Group and Hewlett-Packard:

From Monday until November 5, authors from more than 20 countries with an English-language novel manuscript can submit their work to Amazon which will assign a group of online reviewers to evaluate excerpts online and invite customers to make comments and rank their favorites.

The hope is that by letting writers submit their unpublished novels via the internet, it will greatly level the playing field and allow complete unknowns to have a chance at being published. Furthermore, one of Amazon’s long-running features is to let ordinary readers write reviews of the books they read (many of these reviews are quite comprehensive).

Continue Reading

There’s no doubt that the short story is in trouble. I’ve written about it here (Is the short story dead?), and a trip to your local bookstore will show you just how hard it can be to find a book of short stories amid all those popular fiction novels that sell millions of copies, self-help books promoting the newest fad in pop-psychology, diet books, celebrity memoirs, and…well, the list goes on.

Stephen King, who many consider to be the iconic image of those popular fiction novels that appear to edge out works of short fiction, ironically, is the editor of The Best American Short Stories 2007. These annual collections go back several decades, and when I was just a young, carefree college freshman, I began to read these collections with much interest.

In an essay written for the New York Times Sunday Book Review, King talks of his experience trying to find the best short works of fiction to include in this year’s collection. As he does, he attempts to figure out why the short story, which used to be very lucrative for both writers and publishers, has slid down into the wastebasket of American literature.

Continue Reading

You don’t have to be a Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald or even an Emily Dickenson to leave a literary legacy behind. In fact, you don’t even have to be a published author at all. How is this possible, you ask? The answer can be as simple as keeping a journal. Or, maybe you’re a little more advanced in age and have experienced some interesting things throughout your life, then the answer lies in writing down your memoirs for future generations to enjoy and even study.

A journal entry a day keep writer’s block at bay
Cheesy sayings aside, keeping a simple journal has dual benefits: you create a written record of your life as you experience it, and for those serious about writing, it helps to hone their craft. Writing every day, no matter what form, will help your writing improve. It’s all about practice, practice, practice.

Continue Reading

Are you a publisher that pays writers for their work? If so, I want to hear from you. I’m offering FREE "Writer’s Wanted Ads" to be published in my monthly newsletter. The only requirement is that you pay writers with real money (no paying in "contributor’s copies" or anything like that), and pay a fair sum for their work ($5 for a 50,000 word story is not fair).

This is 100% free for you to advertise your need for writers and even give your publication some more publicity. The newsletter in which your ad will appear is free for all subscribers, so this is a mutually beneficial relationship.

Continue Reading