Lots of writers are. Lots of people are.
For example, if you’re a writer and you get a rejection from agent, publisher or script reader you immediately drop into the depths of despair and sigh those famous words, “I’ll never be a writer.”
Yes, it is important. This blog is focused greatly on writers and to a certain extent readers. So it’s not surprising I repeat quotes such as the one from Stephen King, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
Reading, though, is much more than that. By reading we can learn things, we can learn about places, we can jump into fantasy worlds, interface with intense drama or laugh ourselves silly or submerge in any part of the human (or sometimes even not so human) experience.
But look back at the key words I used in the last paragraph; interface, submerge, dive into, jump into – all of them are indicative of active interaction, not simply the scanning of words. Don’t you find even if it’s text from which you wish to learn something that it needs to grab your attention? That you have a difficult time learning from something that is dry and pedantic?
“Language is the source of misunderstandings.”? Antoine de Saint- Exupéry
Yep, there it is, on a whole lot of levels. Language, writing or speaking, can lead to misunderstandings of a whole host of varieties.
But let’s just stick to the reading and writing arena.
All right! You wrote it, now what are you going to call it? What’s the perfect title for that script that’ll catch a reader’s eye and maybe put it to the top of the stack? What’s the ‘grab-ya’ title for the book manuscript that will get a reader to pick it up and peruse the story?
Yep, it’s a dilemma, that is.
Let’s start at the beginning. First of all a title is short. Yes, yes, I know there are some that use long titles and are successful – yes, yes, yadda, yadda, right. Now that we’ve gotten past that just because YOU happen to have a long, wonderful title let’s get real. Let’s throw out there four words or less.
by Peggy BechkoThere’s a lot of psychology and emotion that goes into great writing.
Emotion is something we all deal with every day and not all of our emotions are easy to deal with. There are all sorts of ways people use to deal with emotions, to cope with the fall-out and generally claw their way through no matter what.
What’s that got to do with writing? Really, you need to ask?