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After all the years my parents busted their bums trying to make me into a more disciplined person, they aren’t going to like this. Not one little bit:
The Importance of Undisciplined Thinking – by Edward Burger
“This course made me realize that there are two ways to view myself and my life: From the outside looking in (how others see me), and from the inside looking out (how I see myself). Now that I’m aware of these two perspectives, I think about everything differently.”
…Or, to put it another way: “Know thy enemy!”
What? You thought they were allies/partners/friends? Oy!
Yes, there are many of those in a writer’s life and they come in a wide variety of very good, very bad and lots of in-betweens. When I look back on the twisting path that brought me to where I am, it never ceases to amaze me. True, there are lots of quiet times tucked in throughout the ‘biggies’ but it’s the bigges we remember most clearly.
My first big moment came when I was about 20. I’d been writing since I was 14, full length novels. And I’d begun submitting to publishers. Back in the typewriter and carbon copy days. Before computers, before copy machines could even made decent copies (scary, huh?). I’d connected with an agency that had taken me on (that was a pretty big moment), things got rolling – then I found out the agency had gone belly-up. Really bad news because in that moment I realized a number of things; agent search would have to be initiated again, time was lost, and worst of all I’d have to retype the entire novel to have it ready for presentation (remember the carbon copy and no computers?)…. Ahhhhhhh!
Next big moment – I got a phone call a few days after the above first big moment. This was a much better big moment. A agent from the defunct agency was calling. He was starting his own agency, liked my work, had an offer from Doubleday and was I interested? Welllll……saved by the weird finger of fate! First novel sold, published when I was 22, a western by genre, Night Of The Flaming Guns. Followed by secondary smaller big moment – told by editor (did I mention that book was written by a 22 year old female in the first person as a 45 year old male?) “women don’t write westerns”; would I be willing to use my initials on the cover – P. A. Bechko? Okey dokey, but only ‘cause ‘women don’t write westerns’. You have to remember this was a few years back…ahem, quite a few as a matter of fact – but sadly probably not as many as you might think.
A big tip of the TVWriter™ hat to screenwriter-blogger Scott Smith for reminding us this great book exists:
Offensive & Defensive Screenwriting (Tip #62) – by Scott W. Smith
“The biggest lesson a screenwriter can learn is how to master a rewrite of his own script, or someone else’s, and make the change a studio wants without destroying the story. It’s like a football game: If you think of writing an original screenplay as ‘offensive’ creativity, then rewriting is all about ‘defensive’ creativity.
…Hmm, these suggestions are all over the web. What can that mean? Everybody reading this who doesn’t feel blocked, raise your hand? Anybody? No…?
10 Block Breakers That Work – By Susan K. Perry
Whether you call it writer’s block or creative block, we all find our work coming less easily at some times than others. That’s when you need strategies, and plenty of them.