#also musing on how it can be difficult to move from one creative medium to another

[revvethasmythh]

working in a new creative medium where I don't have an extensive mental compendium of tips and tricks and decades of experience leading to an ingrained understanding of how to accomplish what I want

#this is about art #i have been drawing a lot lately #also musing on how it can be difficult to move from one creative medium to another #because if you've got quite the handle on one you DO know how to do creative works! just not in THIS particular medium #so you understand HOW to improve and yet find yourself in the frustrating square one all over again #which you had already escaped! but now you are back! to square one! #anyway I am rather committed to working on this new medium but also that screenshot is me at all times #thinking about how easily writing comes to me and how much work a NEW creative medium is to approach

[kiribakuhappiness]

👖 Are you a planner, plantser, or pantser? Is it consistent?

Ahh, this question is always so interesting!

First I just want to define the terms above - in case some people aren't aware of their meaning!

Planner: Relatively self-explanatory, a planner is someone who plans out their entire story from start to finish before they even think about writing it. Character backstories, settings, relationship connections, timelines, order of events and their significance, important symbolic details, everything is entirely fleshed out before that pen hits that paper or before those fingertips start tapping away at that keyboard!

Pros: - No need to stop writing for every new plot point/chapter - Generally very well fleshed out characters and scenes. - Plenty of room for constructing well thought-out foreshadowing.

Cons: - Takes a lot of time and effort before the writing process can even begin. - Generally very difficult to tweak details later on, as it creates a domino effect regarding the remainder of the preemptive planning.

Panster: Coined from the term "by the seat of one's pants," a panster is someone who gets a vague idea for a story and takes off running with it. No direction or planned events needed, just their juicy inspiration and a blank document! Pansters are also usually known for writing scenes out of order.

Pros: - Lots of creative freedom. - No feeling of being weighed down by a predetermined path/plot. - Great technique when writing a story that will contain a lot of plot twists.

Cons: - So. Much. Editing. - Will generally end up doing everything that a Planner would do, just later on in the game. - Character motivations + plot structures can suffer by becoming cloudy and unclear/unexplained.

Planster: Probably the easiest to identify/define after learning about the other two, but a planster is someone who is a healthy mix of both! Most writers are plansters, as the range is much more varied and so, by default, contains the medium average. Plansters will get a new story idea, make a few notes or plan out a few important scenes/details, and then use that like a vague roadmap for their stories similar to the dodgy early-2000's Google Maps Directions.

Pros: - A healthy amount of creative freedom when coming up with new scenes and characters. - Easier to make midcourse adjustments in regard to plot devices, foreshadowing, etc.

Cons: - Writer's block can set in when struggling to connect one vague predetermined plot point to the next.

As for my answer, I am very much a Planster, leaning more towards Panster! Usually when I come up with a new story idea, it's a very vague concept, but a concept nonetheless.

So, take Why Is Everything So Weird With the Lights Off? as an example!

When I started that fic, my only notes going into it were these (copy + pasted from my notes app):

Bakugou appears at Kirishima's door; he's been drinking (third year, reasonable age to engage in such activity). Kirishima's first time seeing Bakugou drunk. Bakugou has come to confess his feelings - Kirishima can't imagine why Bakugou would think that midnight on a school night is a good time to strike up a conversation, but what kind of friend would he be if he turned him away? Kirishima's chivalry to be a good friend battles internally with his desire to be with Bakugou as the night progresses. Bakugou is uncharacteristically touchy and honest about his wants to hang out with Kirishima (internally, he's frustrated that he keeps fucking up his attempts to confess, and so tries to stay later and later to get it right). "'M not fuckin' comfortable," he [Bakugou] says [from the makeshift bed on the floor], louder and firmer, as if that will change anything. From beginning - no attraction/romance detected between them. As story progresses - lines start to cross and blur and Kirishima's buried feelings for Bakugou become more apparent to the reader. (Their relationship has started to subtly change, as all relationships tend to do.)

As you can see, there's very little in-depth details here. I don't really go into long-winded explanations and I don't really focus on anything regarding the setting or plot points. Of course, the type of notes I take and the amount of attention to details I give vary drastically regarding the project, but the entire idea is at least glossed over so I don't forget it, and I always try my best to be firm when considering Character Motive (ie; Bakugou drunkenly arrives with the one and only goal to finally confess his feelings to Kirishima), the rest of the fic and all of its minor details come as a result from these motives.

I'll give another example where I went into A LOT more detail, again, copy + pasted from my notes app! Disclaimer: major spoilers for unwritten chapters regarding Fighting Tooth and Claw to Get Back to You.

[Upon UA Katsuki + Fantasy Katsuki meeting for the first time]

"It is fucking winter?"

"Yeah. It's fuckin' winter."

[Right before they switch back] - UA Katsuki experiences a darkness where he finally meets Barbarian Bakugou face-to-face. They approach each other, movements mirrored, and it's UA Katsuki who raises a hand out towards him first, which Barbarian Bakugou hesitates to accept (he is resentful and ashamed of UA Katsuki and believes him to be ignorant and immature). But UA Katsuki needs to know what happened right before the switch, he needs to unlock that memory, and Barbarian Bakugou is reluctantly curious about his unwavering determination, so they clasp their hands together in a strong grip and are thrust into a new place - sunny and filled with green grass. The barbarian clan is there, Dragon Eijirou included, as they prepare to train for several moons straight before migrating away for the winter. Barbarian Bakugou and Dragon Eijirou leave to go train on their own, unbeknownst to them that Eri is following. They banter for a bit and kiss before bakugou wraps an intimidating hand around his neck and jaw. "Are you going to fight me or not?" Dragon Eijirou grins at that, still giving him a sultry, distracted look despite the fingers clasped threateningly around his neck. "What do I get if I win?" He teases. Barbarian Bakugou smirks before he gives Dragon Eijirou's head a light shove in the opposite direction, who steps out of his space again just as easily as he had entered it. "Off, you dumb lizard," Barbarian Bakugou grumbled, still looking amused before he reached over and pulled the glinting, golden sword (All Might) from its holster on his hip and brandished it towards Eijirou, whose red eyes glisten with a new kind of want as he stared at it - the dragon part of him yearning to collect such a valuable treasure. "You would look good as a King, Katsuki," he tells him. Katsuki's smirk grows wider. "And you as a dragon, if you'd ever hurry the fuck up." He gave the sword a vague sway through the space between them and Eijirou's eyes flash dangerously. "Come and take it from me. I know you want to," Katsuki goaded. Eijirou turns into a dragon and they fight.

[Choice made when Imperial soldiers attack during their training session (mentioned at beginning of story by Sero)] - All Might (sword) is falling off the cliff's edge, while Dragon Eijirou is about to get shot by a piercing arrow. Barbarian Bakugou chooses to try and save Dragon Eijirou (abandoning the sword and his future Kingdom), who calls out "NO" even as a dragon who shouldn't be able to speak (he doesn't want Bakugou to lose his throne just for him), which causes Barbarian Bakugou to stop abruptly in shock. The arrow is shot and pierces Dragon Eijirou's underbelly. He lets out a loud roar before he plummets down into the forest out of sight (leading to his capture). Barbarian Bakugou sees red, reaching down to grab the nearest abandoned steel sword (one shown at beginning of story that UA Kirishima shatters) that he then uses to swing down and slice into the shoulder of the soldier that had shot Dragon Eijirou. More soldiers descend into the valley. Katsuki hears a scream and turns to see Eri lying on the ground, terrified as a soldier holds up a crossbow at her. "TO THE END OF ALL DRAGONS!" The man yelled (revealing that Eri, in the fantasy timeline, is also a dragon, and explains her fondness for Barbarian Bakugou when she joins their group and observes how he treats Dragon Eijirou with kindness instead of prejudiced fear). Barbarian Bakugou's feet move without thinking as he lunges in front of Eri, just as her fingertips reach out and graze along his shoulder before everything goes black.

When UA Katsuki awakes again, he is in the hospital on campus, and Kirishima is sleeping in the chair beside him.

[fantasy setting, after the switch back. Barbarian Bakugou - despite still being offered the throne for Musutafu - declines. Izuku and Todoroki are preparing to go back to the kingdom with the news of the vanquish of the Imperial Army, gazing out at Bakugou's barbarian clan as he absently moves about the crowd, barking orders and preparing his clan for travel. Dragon Eijirou joins them to watch as well.] "I am surprised to learn of Kacchan's abandonment of the throne. I thought there was nothing in this world that could replace his desire to be King," Izuku mused out loud to him. "He would have made a great leader."

Dragon Eijirou grinned from beside him. "You're wrong, Izuku," he states simply. "He already is a great leader."

Because of the complexity of the story, with all its many plot twists and such a large cast of important characters, my notes are far more in depth here than they are for my other fic - however, these notes wouldn't necessarily be structured enough to be considered a Planner-mindset, as there is still plenty of room for added details, dialogue, etc.

Phew! What a fucking post :,D a big ole chonker - I hope you enjoyed reading at least, if you've made it this far! 🧡

Fanfic Ask Game - send me a question! ☺️

#fic ask game #kiribaku #writing #personal #asks

[gretavanfleetposts]

hii i was wondering if i could get a ship pls

i’m 5’2 with medium length brown hair with the underneath of it dyed blonde. i’m an aquarius and go by she/her pronouns. i’m definitely more introverted than extroverted but once i get comfortable i’m the most talkative person in the room. i’m a makeup artist and love fashion. i’m currently in college working towards becoming a teacher. my music taste is kinda all over the place. i love bands like fleetwood mac and pink floyd but i also love artists like doja cat and taylor swift. my personal style can vary anywhere from all black to bright colors. i much prefer salty over sweet and i love cats. my favorite song is currently my way by pvris. thank you so much !!!

Hello, love!

❤: First of all, you seem so creative and talented! Being a makeup artist sounds like so much fun; that might be the dream job. Also, I admire anyone who wants to be a teacher. I love your music taste too. You definitely aren't a music snob (which I think that's a good thing) so I will not be shipping you with Sam.

Ship: Danny

Because: Danny definitely wouldn't judge your music taste and I think he would really enjoy being exposed to such a variety of music through you. I think he would also admire your desire to be a teacher and would love how caring and genuine you are. I think you would do a good job of bringing him out of his shell in situations where you're comfortable but you also wouldn't bee too chaotic for him. And I can definitely see him having you help him put together outfits.

Scenario:

You and Danny had always been close but lately the tension between the two of you had been especially palpable

The twins had been the ones to introduce you to Danny in a dimly lit bar while they were visiting your city

You knew the moment you met him that he was special and since then, the two of you had had a very close relationship

And ever since he had asked you a month ago to go on tour with them and you had accepted, things had seemed to heat up between you, infinitely more stolen glances and close encounters

You knew it was only a matter of time before one of you made a move, although if you were being honest, you didn't totally mind the dance you two were doing

Nevertheless, as Danny sat on a stool in front of you, ever so still to let you apply blue eyeliner to his eyes, you felt your pulse racing

You were in his dressing room helping him get ready for a show, practically holding your breath as you traced the liner over his eye, using the fact that his eyes were closed as an opportunity to fully take in his beauty

You admired his hair which was half up with curls loosely framing his face

You drank in his smell, woodsy and cozy

Your eyes traced the line of his strong nose, from his brow bone to the tip

It was difficult not to get distracted

"Can I open yet?" he asked softly, pulling you from your daze

You realized you hadn't even been applying the liner anymore, simply staring

You were glad he hadn't seen

You gave him a quick apology and told him to open his eyes and give his opinion

He turned to admire your artistry in the mirror for a moment and then turned back to you with a smile

"You've outdone yourself"

You mumbled something about how it was more the canvas and not the makeup, heat rushing to your cheeks as you became aware of how close you still were to him

He must have noticed because he brought his thumb up to your face and swiped it slowly over your cheek, a look on his face that could be described as amused

"We seem to find ourselves in this situation a lot," he mused

You nodded, unable to formulate any words as he used his thumb and forefinger to hold your chin

"I think it's time we do something about it," he whispered before closing the gap between you

A knock on the door and someone on the other side yelling "5 minutes to showtime!" startled the two of you out of your kiss

You both glanced at the door then back at each other, laughing lightly as you wiped your lipstick off his mouth

You hurried him up out of his chair and fixed a piece of hair as he stood in the doorway getting ready to go on

"I'll hurry," he said and you gave him a laugh before he joined the boys in the hallway

You could hear Sam and Jake giving him knowing 'ooooh's as they walked down the hallway and onto the stage

I hope you liked it! Thank you for the request!

-⭐

Ships are currently closed

#gvf ships #gvf #anon #anon ships #ships #greta van fleet #greta van fleet ships #gretavanfleetpostsships

[walkingshcdow-a]

🔥 gimme the salt on poto

Satly Saturday | Buckle Up. | Accepting!

Do you want ALL THE SALT or just some of it? Because i feel like I could write a dissertation on everything wrong with PotO and, more specifically, the Phandom and be only a diploma shy from my doctorate. 

One of the things I’m incredibly angry about is that it is still an “unpopular opinion” that Meg Giry is anything but blonde and white. In the novel, she is described as “swarthy” with dark hair and eyes, but even if that were not the case, who does it harm to headcanon her as a WoC? I think it is much more damaging to ascribe white traits and white traits only to her, not only because in the Leroux text, she is not white, but because other interpretations of PotO, whether they be the stage show or a roleplay portrayal, should be more open to diversity in general. The world is diverse. And the world was diverse in the 19th century. Historians, novelists, and filmmakers tend to whitewash history and create a false monolith of Europe and the Americas, except when it furthers a particular narrative (typically revolving around the American South, even when the American South has no bearing on a story, like PotO, which takes place in a different country altogether). It’s disgusting. 

The thing that gets me, though, is that the Phandom largely just accepts that Meg Giry is white and blonde. That’s the way it is in the stage show and since stage shows (and their subsequent film adaptations) are visual mediums, whereas novels rely on imagination, it’s “easier” to use images from the show to make aesthetics, fan art, etc. about Meg. It’s pure laziness most of the time; ignorance in other instances. This, to me, is dangerous in a different way than adamantly demanding Meg Be White for thinly veiled reasons tied up in racism. We know the latter is wrong. We take people to task on the latter. We demand more and better from our fandoms than casual, but intentional, racism. When it’s unintentional… or when it’s intentional because 99 percent of media including Meg Giry whitewashes her, we still hit that like button or that reblog button, instead of demanding better from our fandoms. I’m not calling for people to spam content creators with vitriol over their blonde, cherubic Meg Girys. I am calling for people to create more black Meg Girys, more Asian Meg Girys, more Jewish Meg Girys, more Latina Meg Girys, more Middle Eastern Meg Girys. Take what precious little Leroux gave us about her and expand your interpretation. Be kind to interpretations that are racially/ethnically different than the norm, or even than your own. The headcanons someone is posting about a Romani Meg Giry might be their way of connecting their own heritage to the text, of seeking representation that was hinted at in the book and destroyed in later interpretations. The fan art of a black Meg Giry might be a young woman’s way of seeing herself or her friends or her sisters in an art form (ballet) that has traditionally been unkind to WoC. Meg as a woman of color is so important - especially when you dare to mash up Leroux with ALW because the traits they each give her, when put together, create a complex and nuanced young woman that anyone might be happy to identify with. Whitewashing her takes that opportunity away from fans, especially young fans, who do not otherwise see themselves reflected in this beautiful melodrama. Ad who wants to be the gate keeper to a world of fun and joy? The ones we should be taking to task are the casting directors of PotO productions - especially in the US and UK, since those shows are most widely seen and publicized. Not just the ALW show (although I do hold the ALW show responsible for whitewashing Meg in the first place), but future productions of PotO by other creators. 

I also think that for people who aren’t fans of Meg, who don’t pay her much mind, don’t understand why this is such a contentious issue for those of us who love her, whether we love her from Leroux, Webber, or another iteration. For me, the version I take issue with is the ALW version… largely because I believe ALW Meg to be a composite of Meg Giry, La Sorelli, and Cecile Jammes from the Leroux novel. You see traits of each woman reflected in ALW Meg. She’s aged up, perhaps not prima ballerina, but a principal dancer. She’s superstitious, but level-headed. Kind, almost maternal, but bubbly and fun. She’s bold and fascinated by the strange goings-on around her. If ALW had wanted to give her the blonde, blue-eyed good looks of a Barbie Doll, he would have done better to name her after Jammes, who has a peaches and cream complexion in the novel. He could have even named her after Sorelli, though this move would have been more difficult, since Sorelli was a principal dancer and not the daughter of one of Erik’s employees. No. He chose to name her after Meg Giry and elevate her to secondary character status. The least he could have done was make her look the part. It would not have been the first time a principal cast member in an ALW was a PoC. Ben Vereen played Judas in the Broadway debut of JCS. So, why so scared to cast a black woman (or, really, any WoC) as Meg Giry? Come on, ALW. Would it have been so hard? It could have started the conversation about race in period dramas or the conversation about racism in the fine arts (especially ballet) twenty or thirty years earlier. And even if it didn’t, PotO would still be the beautiful leviathan it is today. 

Of course, I know that in a post-LND world, a lot of people have bigger complaints about Meg Giry’s treatment in modern stagings. I agree with them - the characterization of Meg Giry in LND is painful to watch. It’s inconsistent with what we know of her in the original show; it certainly is divorced from the novel in all ways. The flaws with Meg’s character in LND have nothing to do with the fact that she’s made into a sex worker (although that choice is questionable from a narrative standpoint, not a moral one. What does it add to Meg’s arc that she sold herself to help buy Phantasma? The implication that we’re meant to see her as lesser than Christine for it is the real moral quandary, But I digress). Rather, the flaws with Meg’s character stem from her being inconsistent with all previous and recognizable versions of her character and with the anti-feminist need to pit two women, who were previously the best of friends, against each other over a man… Not even a man who treats one or both of them right… like… it pits two best friends against each other over an abusive narcissist. It does no characters any favors, least of all poor Meg, who is made out to be needy, jealous, emotionally unstable… It does a poor job getting from Point A to Point B. 

This bastardization of Meg’s character would probably seem like a great bullet to dodge, insofar as representation goes. I think it would be absolutely disgusting to cast a black woman as LND Meg, due to all the negative stereotyping that would end up clouding even the best performance. However, LND was not the commercial or critical success ALW hoped it would be. Not even close. It underwent a lot of rewritings, still was not highly successful, and (by and large) disappoints both fans of the original story and newcomers to the PotO story. It is nowhere near the cultural phenomenon that PotO is. And so, then, again I ask - why have we not seen a WoC in the role of Meg? It’s only very recently that we’ve seen PoC in the roles of Christine, the Phantom, and Raoul. Meg is still depicted as white. I’m hoping that the trend of diversifying Broadway is more than a trend, but instead a cultural shift in how Broadway appeals to the masses. I hope to see a WoC play Meg (and Madame Giry, who I’ve neglected to mention until now, woops) within my lifetime. 

Honestly, I think that I only really started thinking about this critically two years ago when my Salt Squad and I got talking about representation in the Phandom, particularly in the RPC. I was rereading Leroux at the time and meditating on Kay (as one does) in my spare time and it occurred to me that if I wanted to see some change in the Phandom, I had to be a part of the side I wanted to see prevail. I had to be some of the change I wanted to see in the Phandom. So I took up Meg as a muse. I’m starting to see more and more racially diverse Megs in the Phandom and that thrills me. I want to @fillescharmxnt because her Meg is what I aspired for mine to be in so many ways. There are plenty of other fanartists, fic writers, and aesthetic makers who are doing such great things with recontextualizing Meg Giry for the 21st century.

I do want to include this disclaimer, though: just because someone is roleplaying, writing, drawing, headcanoning Meg as white, doesn’t mean that their ideas are without merit. There are plenty of very talented artists, writers, and bloggers who depict Meg as white. My goal is not to shame them - a lot of them do great work, both from a technical and emotional standpoint - but rather to invite them to the conversation about Meg Giry, race, and representation. I urge these fans to challenge their notions about Meg Giry and to be open to accepting ideas that are different from theirs. Even those of us who HC Meg as a WoC enjoy and support content with blonde Meg (like… can we talk about the Brazilian actress with the freckles?!). All I ask is that fans of white Meg Giry enjoy and support content with black/Asian/Jewish/Romani/Latina/Middle Eastern/Other Meg Giry in return. 

Fans can question the media they consume. Fans can challenge the media they consume. But at the end of the day, it is the media that we create and ask to be created that make the most difference. The only way media gets created is if there is a demand for. Be willing to demand a more inclusive, more historically accurate depiction of Meg Giry and you will be rewarded with a creative explosion of fan created content. 

#asks #meme response #((this is not what you asked for is it?)) #tw: racism #fictioncoxnt

[visualskills2]

Exercise 1. 2: Good working Habits

1.       What do you need to be creative?

My notebook (No the sketchbook but the notebook I use for writing). I did this for the first-time last assignment, and it did work well. I not only got an idea for the assignment but also a couple of other that are quite interesting

My own space and music.

Sketchbook

Magazines

Cheap paper or a table (not often)

 Art materials. Lot and lots of them (It is funny because I always use the same, but I feel safe is I have gouache or acrylic even though I do not use them. This is like Charly Brown and the blanket).

Pinterest and box of reference

2.       Are these certain factors that are important for you to develop your work?

I prefer to work from home. I want to join drawing and painting classes, but I feel ashamed of my work.  I think feeling safe is important.

3.1 When, where and how do you work?

I cannot work in two different things at the same time. If I have a personal project or even a sketch book and university work, I get overwhelm. Although I ma not sure if this is just before I have the new space because before was exceedingly difficult to have to projects at the same time.

I am a late person, so I do normally work better at night. I think I like the quiet time.

3.2 How might you develop this approach further?

Improving sketching is paramount because I always can have ideas, but I always feels that my ideas are too complicated to illustrate. This will change is I sketch every day. First, I need to see the kind of things I can do (type of registration). Last year I did a sketchbook of madness where I used every technique, subject and mix and much with styles. I had a couple of drawings that I love so I took one of those (ink with brush and nibs) and I started a sketchbook that follow that illustration.

This idea worked well. First allowed me to know the medium better but also, I explore subject matters and ideas that were similar. I will love to finish the ink sketchbook and start a new sketchbook and start this process again.

I also want to add a new step. There is a couple of pages that I did not like and I want to go back and add pastel or oil pastel. I think this will enrich my imagination and can complement the journal I keep.

4.       How do I best document my work?

Photos and videos. I need to learn how to take better pictures and videos for this purpose.

5.       What kind of questions do you use to reflect on your work?

Did I achieve what I was looking forward? Did I put effort? Do I like? Was it as interesting as I thought was going to be? Do I like? Do I hate it?

I think time is also important when you are looking into something that you did. Allowed you to be objective.

6.       How important is the reflection in your process?

It is important but I do it mostly at the beginning and at the end. I think I am a bit rigid in the middle of it.

7.       Can you develop new questions and prompts?

Yes. I can. I have been writing since I was 16 so I do normally extrapolate this process to my illustration process. When I write, I have a couple of places to go for a new idea. Fee writing, what if, something that I am reading at that moment. Something that bothers me (normally politics) and I had used this process when I am looking for ideas to illustrate. The problems with these are the complexity of my ideas. When you write the sky is the limit, but I am not sure I have the skill to translate my ideas to drawings (sad)

8.       How does this reflection help feedback into your making?

It depends on the reflection. It is easy to improve on a technique or research on a particular type of perspective but sometimes the reflection is ambiguous, and it is difficult to translate in a appropriate behaviour.

9.       How would you describe your creative process?

A bit messy. I do not have a consistent creative process.

10.   What sort of stages do you go through initiate and develop your ideas and work?

First: I have the exercise prompt and come with a draft of an idea. Follow by a lot of thoughts, adding and changing the original idea.

Secondly: I start working of the project, doing the first sketches, changing the general idea

Third: At this stage I do normally have an idea of the style and colours I want for the piece. I might do research on a technique that I want to use.

Fourth: I think this is the problematic part. Even when I know something is off, I move on. I do not change the idea or perspective. I always running against time.

11.   How important are restrictions to your process?

I always work with a restricted palette of colour, but I do it naturally. I have never tried other type of restrictions to see. Perhaps size. I did that when I work in the tomato project and that was fun and worked well. In summary, I do not think I have done it enough times to be more than anecdotal.

12.   Do you start with an idea or proposal, start making and see where it takes you or work in a different way?

It seems that I am rigid. At the beginning I can adapt, to change from one idea to the next but after I invest a bit into an idea, even when I do not like it, I do not seem to be able to change. That has happened a couple of time. The first time, I could not start again. The second time, I continue, and it was nice, but I think it would have been nicer the other idea or perhaps to test it.

13.   Do you have any strategies to deal with creative blocks or obstacles?

I have never experience creative blocks. I guess it is because I always thinking about staff, reading, or looking to other people’s work and these things are inspiring. I also free write that also trigger ideas. No all of them are usable but many are.

I do suffer other type of obstacles and this is more related with self-doubt. I criticise everything that I do too much too soon. I have notice that paralyze me and I am not able to solve problems that I will normally be able to.

14.   What does experimentation look like to you?

Buy need art supplies and mix it up with other things. I also tried other people techniques to see how I can interpret them. I have made brushes or modelling. I am not afraid to get dirty.

Unfortunately, I am not sure how this fun time (I really enjoy this) can be translated to a piece. I watched a couple of days ago an illustrator using an air brush for watercolour painting and I have experiment with it but I have not been able to use it.

So, I can come back to a fear of failure. I think this is the main issue.

15.   Where do you work, what kind of physical spaces do you need?

I need a big table. No all the time but I do. I think that help me to work bigger and to see all the things that I am doing at the same time and compare. I also need good lighting (I have eye pain so working in poor light conditions are bad for my condition. I still looking for a better lighting option within my budget)

16.   When do you work, how best can you structure your time?

This is also a problem. Back to the light. I prefer night-time to work, I can work all night long or for longer period without interruptions, but the lack of natural light is a problem and the shadows with artificial light is also a problem ☹

17.   How do you draw on inspiration to feed your creativity?

The muse. I do not have a muse. If I do not know what to do I read or watch a film, read my diary, or write. I do not have an inspiration moment. I have a zone moment (I am in the zone) where I can write for hours and hours or draw and draw but it always happens when I am already working.

I think the zone is more like a concentration period rather than a muse, but other people might disagree. I have seen this “zone” phenomenon in my writing group a lot. People who can write 1000 words in 15m without a problem. I asked people and they think to believe it is inspiration.

#assignment1

[susanbcnvs]

okay so!! drizzle here with my second child. susan is a completely new muse, and honestly i don’t know what i’m doing ( tho lbh, when do i ever? ), but i’ve written down some hcs that should hopefully make at least some sense and be somewhat helpful?? let’s just get into it. trigger warnings: death, mourning, super brief mentions of anxiety/ panic

SIMAY BARLAS? No, that’s actually SUSAN BONES from the GOLDEN TRIO ERA. You know, the child of HENRY BONES and SOPHIE BONES? About to begin SIXTH YEAR, this HUFFLEPUFF student is sided with THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX. SHE identifies as CIS-FEMALE and is a HALFBLOOD who is known to be SENSITIVE, PERFECTIONISTIC, and CYNICAL but also COMPASSIONATE, INDEPENDENT, and HARD-WORKING.

so susan obviously comes from the prominent bones family, that has close ties to the ministry and have been very against blood supremacy for a long time now. her parents, grandparents, uncle edgar and his family were all murdered in the first wizarding world, so susan was raised by her remaining aunt amelia. since she was only one year old at the time her parents died, she has no memories of them, and only what amelia has told her. the first wizarding war obviously had a huge impact on her family, and unlike some children that grew up in peaceful ignorance of the devastating effects of the war and blood supremacy, she’s never not seen the effect it had and the terror it caused. still, she’s grateful for the life she’s been given. her aunt was amazing and worked hard to make susan’s childhood a good one. and it was, for the most part --- she knows she could be so much worse off, and she’s grateful that she had amelia and for everything she’s given her. still, sometimes it was difficult not to let grief and bitterness and cynicism seep in, on birthdays and death anniversaries and those moments she’d catch her aunt grieving in private 

when she came to hogwarts, she was quickly sorted into hufflepuff. she was briefly considered for slytherin ( not quite long enough to be considered a hatstall ) due to her ambition, resourcefulness and determination, but ultimately her hufflepuff traits won out and her admiration for their attitudes and beliefs. there hasn’t been a day where she’s thought she was sorted into the wrong house --- she’s a hufflepuff through and through, and although she only had her aunt growing up, she found another family in her hufflepuff classmates, one which she will always be grateful for

susan is very enduring and persevering tbh. in part i think it’s just how she was raised? i mean, amelia lost all her family except for susan, and suddenly she had this baby she had to raise --- she definitely had to adapt and persevere through it despite the losses and grief she felt. susan knows that life can be cruel, it can bring you down, it can try its hardest to break you, but she also knows that she has to find a way to adapt to it and keep going? susan doesn’t view breaking down or being overwhelmed by negative emotions as a weakness, and when life gets tough she won’t ignore them or pretend she doesn’t feel them. i mean, it’s not something she wants to display in public, but in private or around people she trusts she’s comfortable with falling apart if that makes any sense?? she would never want to go through life as an emotionless zombie just to stay ‘strong’, but she also won’t let her emotions bring her down or stop her from moving forward? we’re closing in on 2 a.m. over here so i am most likely not explaining this well at all lmao, but this gif from the bold type ( go watch it ) kind of sums up her general attitude and approach to the challenging parts of life:

fifth year was... not fun. still reeling from the loss of cedric, umbridge changing essentially everything they loved about the school, the fear of the approaching war, joining the d.a. in hopes of being able to protect herself and her loved ones  --- all things that contributed to it being a Stressful Year. not only that, but her best friend hannah abbott lost her mum and susan had to watch her spiral out of control with little to no idea of how she could help her through it. furthermore, the death eaters that murdered her uncle edgar and his family escaped from prison, and throughout the school year she was pestered with questions from other students about her family and how they were murdered, understandably causing her a lot of emotional distress. she tried to focus her attention on the d.a. and the rest of her classes that umbridge hadn’t changed too much, but at the end of the school year she was just relieved to go home tbh and attempt put that behind her

sorry to say susan, but it only gets worse after that. in july before the start of this school year, amelia was personally murdered by voldemort in their home. susan was at a friend’s house at the time --- she wouldn’t be alive now if she’d been home --- but she was the one to discover her. i’m not gonna go into any details because none of us need that, but it was clear amelia had put up one hell of a fight, and it was obviously a traumatising experience for susan

since amelia had been her last living relative, susan was now an orphan with no other relatives to turn to. thankfully enough, hannah’s family were willing to take her in so that she wouldn’t have to go to a children's home/ into foster care. can’t even begin to explain how relieved susan was about that tbh, it might have been too much for her to handle otherwise. she may not have any blood relatives left, but she still has a family that will support her and catch her when she falls, and that familiarity and knowledge really does so much in helping her feel less alone and not letting her somewhat cynical nature bring her down, and just mourn her aunt in peace?? 

legit where would susan be without hannah abbott?? she’s happy she never has to know the answer to that

really into things like scrapbooking, pottery, knitting, photography and other creative mediums?? just finds them to be a good way for her to relax and not think Too Much for a while, plus she gets something beautiful out of it at the end ( she is here for the #aesthetic ). she might not be excellent at all of it ( her knitting is definitely Questionable ) but she finds it therapeutic

usually makes yearly scrapbooks for the hufflepuffs that they can keep in the common room to look back on fond memories, and that new/ future students can look through and see how close-knit they are. sort of a way to show them that although they may be away from their parents and the home that they know, they have a family here too that will support them through their years here and be there whenever they need a friend?? 

definitely did a little scrapbook in honour of cedric that anyone who wanted to help out with could, so that future generations got an idea of what an incredible person he was, and that he’s not just a name that’s remembered

is probably working on a scrapbook rn about her family, partly as a way to help her process and deal with the fact that they’re all gone now, and partly just to make sure that they’re not just another couple of names on a list of the deceased either. i mean, the bones family is well known in the wizarding world, especially in connection to the ministry, so she knows they won’t ever really be forgotten, but amelia was more than just the head of the department of magical law enforcement, and susan wants to show that. like i said, it’s just a scrapbook for herself and not something she would actually share, but she just kind of wants to show who they were as people and how much they mattered, even if it’s just to herself?? and obviously she didn’t know her parents or grandparents or the other family members that died during the first war, but she’s trying her best to do them justice based on the memories amelia told her about growing up 

definitely that student with perfectly colour-coordinated notes, organised binders, meticulously planned study timetable, detailed essay plans etc. etc. and just really looks like she Knows what she’s doing even if she’s just screaming on the inside

if she had grown up in modern times, she would be like.... ridiculously devoted to the bullet journal system and just make it aesthetic af. tho i guess now that she’s in the future, she might get the chance to actually try it

not one to procrastinate; knows it won’t do her any good, and would rather dive right into a task so she can give it her all. which is a good thing, because if she did procrastinate, she would likely Die from stress ( she already sort of is ). she can be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to her schoolwork ( putting it lightly tbh ). she’s been known to finish an essay ( which she edited several times to make it Good Enough ) in the evening and then the next day decide that it is not, in fact, good enough and quite literally burn it and start again

honestly i’m making myself stressed just thinking about it pls love yourself susan and don’t make life harder for yourself 

for someone who seems so organised and put together, she actually has no idea what she’s really doing --- the future after hogwarts is just a terrifyingly blank canvas to her right now. she feels an extreme pressure to live up to her surname, especially now that she’s the last survivor, because her family did so much good. they were some of the brightest wizards and witches of their age, especially her aunt amelia, and it was part of the reason why they were targeted. susan just wants to make them, and herself, proud. she wants to make a real difference in the world, but whether that means heading into the same career field as amelia or doing something different, she’s not sure of yet

that’s also part of the reason why she puts so much effort into her studies --- when she finally figures out what she wants to do, she doesn’t want to realize she can’t do it because she didn’t work hard enough in school or anything. she just wants to give herself as good chance as possible to succeed

so. it’s pretty clear that susan Cares about her academic life, but it doesn’t come close to how much she cares about her friends. she will drop everything for you, no questions asked. even if you wake her at three a.m. the night before a big exam, she’ll stay up with you for the rest of the night if that’s what you need, talking or playing games or drinking a comforting cup of cocoa --- whatever you need. she’ll panic about the consequences later, for sure, but she’ll be there when you need her. she only had her aunt growing up, but she views her friends at hogwarts ( especially the other hufflepuffs ) as family, and she’ll do anything for them. they don’t have to consider her family in return, but she’ll definitely try her hardest to be there for them as much as possible

really good at braiding hair?? usually wears her hair in a long braid down her back, and is always willing to braid others’ hair, especially the younger students. the big sister of hufflepuff tbh

is honestly just. Terrified by the war, by the death eaters, by voldemort. i mean, the wars have claimed her whole family --- there’s never really been a time where she didn’t understand how serious the war was, how devastating the impact of it could be. how frightening of a time it was. one thing that hits her particularly hard is the fact that her family were great wizards --- they were so talented, and they still ended up dead. if they couldn’t make it out alive, what chance would susan really stand if the death eaters decided they wanted to rid the world of the last surviving bones member? she’s just so scared

that being said, she isn't someone who would let her fear paralyse or stop her from doing what's right? she's still going to fight for her friends, for the justice of her family, for the targeted muggleborns and blood traitors. she'll do anything she can to help dumbledore's army, even if she's scared as hell the whole time

in terms of the time travel thing, susan is Stressed and Conflicted. amelia's death is still so recent, susan doesn't even know what would happen if she met her here --- whether she would appreciate getting a few more moments with her aunt or if it'd just make the grieving and eventual goodbye harder ( because susan wholeheartedly believe there has to be a way for them to revert everything back to normal ). there's also the chance that she could run into her parents, or the other family members she never got to know --- and although she's always wanted to get the chance to know them, now that it might actually be a reality, she doesn't know how to feel. of course, there's also the worry of how this could affect the war, and the world as a whole --- what would happen if there was no way to fix this?? basically, susan is conflicted af atm and she is Not here for this situation.

at long last i will Shut Up and leave you with her pinterest board

#eras intro #( about. ) #wow once again i rambled A Lot #is anyone even surprised at this point #death tw #mourning tw #anxiety mention #panic mention #edit: just noticed tumblr cut off the last few bullet points smh but it's been fixed now

[mmwitch-blog]

Witch Muse

Name: Petrea Baker Superhero/villain Name: [IN PROGRESS]           Alliance: Neutral Age: 23                       Height: 5’ 6”   Weight: 119 lbs. Sex: Female     Sexuality: Bisexual DOB: October 16th    POB: New York City, New York Type of witch: Green, Solitary, Secular, and uses Sigils and Tarot Cards How she received her Superpower: A coven gave her a deck of cursed tarot cards.

Personality: She is always welcome to meeting new people. She is practical in both her work and normal life. Being creative with the herbs is an outlet. She is always willing to help others. She has no fear of standing up for the mistreated. She can adapt to almost any situation. Because she doesn’t trust people’s words she is straightforward/blunt so there is no miscommunication. Some people don’t like her straightforwardness, but her excuse is that she is being genuine. She is very detail oriented, especially when it comes to her work (both at the café and hero/villain). She listens to her intuition and sometimes that attracts trouble for her due to being curious. She is very observant about other people and can easily assess the situation or how one is feeling. She is determined about her job. Because of her past she is very independent and has difficulty working with more than one person.

Normal appearance/outfit: Wavy medium chestnut brown collarbone length hair styled in a half bun, fair skin with freckles, and scar on her right eyebrow’s arch. Gray colored eyes. Soft black wrist length gloves, knee length skirt, long sleeve white button up with black ribbon tied in a bow, simple black ankle boots with silver zipper on side, and small brown leather backpack with her tarot cards inside. Super outfit: Long straight lilac wig, Laena hooded scarf, skinny jeans, loose scoop neck long sleeve shirt, combat boots with a sigil engraved on the inside granting flight, and a belt with the tarot card leather pouch with clasp attached to it.

Dislikes: Dislikes large and extravagant things and will refuse them, instead she cares more about the small treasures given from the heart. Hates cooked carrots because her aunt made them all the time. Interests/hobbies: Witchcraft, sewing/embroidering, gardening, spray paint art, reading, and going to the local market for food. Strengths: Her intuition and her witchcraft. Being able to put others before herself. Weaknesses: In some situations she can easily lose her temper or become angered (even more so when people tell her to calm down or mistake annoyance for anger). Because of her past she is afraid of getting into a serious car accident and when she sees one she runs the other way. Habits: Has a tendency to stare off into space when in thought and sometimes difficult to get her out of it. When surprised or nervous she is rather clumsy. When she is angered she takes a walk to cool off or tell those around to not talk to her so she doesn’t say something she doesn’t mean.

Occupation: Her friend, Doe, and her run a small café called “Witches Cupboard”. Doe is a kitchen witch and makes the drinks and food. Petrea serves, takes care of the herbs, and other witchy stuff. Though there is a rule where “Any activity that requires use of the witch themselves is to be done after work hours.” Above the café are two living quarters, the second floor is Petrea’s and the third floor is Doe’s.

Past: Her mother had died when she was young in a car accident, her father had turned to alcohol in an attempt to cope with the loss. Soon, they had to move to a really unsafe neighborhood and in a really small apartment. In an attempt to help his daughter, Petrea’s father had attempted to rob a bank, but failed. She was moved to her aunt’s resident. Her aunt was a witch in a coven. The coven had then taken Petrea under their wings and became her family as well. Then, one day the coven and her aunt disappeared and left her the deck of cursed cards and an envelope of money. She then returned to the streets because that’s a place she knows. She still searches for them to understand why.

Notes: ·         Tarot cards are completely black unless she uses them, then white ink will appear. Can only use three at a time and each ability assigned to a specific cards lasts a certain time. In other words, the more cards she uses the less the time limit for each card. Minimum time limit is three minutes. Also, if one is to attempt to destroy the cards, remove the curse, or break the curse they are hexed with unimaginable bad luck (in some cases it lead to death). ·         Has three black cats that are actually from the spirit realm. Their names are Tamil (three eyes), Malisha (six eyes) and S (four eyes) ·         Always carries a bottle of green tea to replenish energy after a battle ·         Distrustful about people’s words/information given so she is always cautious at first. ·         At the café you could order a cup of coffee with a shot of charisma, etc.

DO NOT CLAIM AS OWN OR ROLEPLAY THIS CHARACTER, IT BELONGS TO ME (@mmwitch) THE RIGHTFUL OWNER. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DO A ROLEPLAY WITH ME USING HER PLEASE MESSAGE ME.

#witch muse #oc #oc rp #marvel muse #rp musings #mmuse

[fallingxslowly-archived-blog]

RULES

This is an INDEPENDENT MULTI MUSE RP blog for the characters of shows such as Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash, Supergirl and the Disney Move Descendants, the characters of this blog include; A human/AI personification of Gideon, Leonard and Lisa Snart, Mick Rory, Axel Walker, Hartley Rathaway, Kara Danvers,Winn Schott Jr, Harry Hook and Isabelle (Tinkerbells daughter)

ABOUT THE MUN

      Both mun and my muses are of legal age (mun is 24+, while muses are canon age ), however in a few verses my muses are underage so there will be no NSFW whatsoever. I find it very difficult to interact with child characters so will rarely ever accept a thread if the muse is under sixteen unless it is due to a meme. 

      Penname is Amy, I use she/her pronouns. I live in Britain so am on the GMT timezone (I think it’s GMT +1 but I’m useless with this stuff so I’m sorry if I’m wrong)

        My blog usually states that I am Semi-Hiatus, this is because I am usually either in work, babysitting my sister or just don’t have the energy to write. When I do have the chance to write then usually I will write everything and then post them slowly or queue them all depending on how I feel about a thread at that time.

         A lot of my icons are made by myself, I am currently redoing a number of them for some characters but have some 100x100px ones under icon edits that I made available to people to edit themselves if they so wish. The icons that weren’t made by myself are my Kara icons (unfortunately I can’t find who to credit for them)

          I’ll be the first to admit that I post A LOT of ooc stuff (I usually delete it because it’s just to clear my mind), if you don’t want to see it then ((out of snark: ooc)) is my tag so blacklist it.

         I was a media student for four years and in those four years I studied about five creative writing courses that drilled into me the need for character building so OC’s are difficult for me to get my head around.

BLOG

       After deliberation I have decided to make the blog a mutuals only blog.

       I am OC friendly, but my muses need to ‘click’ with the characters because otherwise it would be forced and it will be bad for both of us, I WILL NOT interact with characters that are product of incest, and I will not interact with characters that are all powerful with very little thought put into them to balance it out. 

       I don’t follow personal blogs and if someone follows me, I sometimes block them if there is no indication that they are an rp blog or have a sideblog so please be careful with following me; at least let me know via IM if you have a side blog.

        Cutting posts is difficult for me when I am on mobile so I apologise in advance. If I am on mobile then I will either tag it, or I will warn you in advance.

         I will very rarely do about the mun posts, if they interest me then I’ll do them but sometimes I just haven’t got the time to do them.

CANON DIVERGENCE AND VERSES FOR CW SHOWS

          This blog is canon divergent the majority of the time, I will do threads that follow series two of Legends if it’s requested but otherwise it my threads will remain canon divergent, the main differences are:

           Leonard is alive, he did die to begin with but he was just sent through time and awoke in Central City not long after the invasion.

           Kendra and Carter did leave and the crew were scattered but for how long is unclear so Nate was required to join and Amaya joined because of Thawne

            To Gideon, Sara was NEVER Captain, she may have been co-captain but Rip is always her Captain, she will never go against him, and she would never hide anything from him if it meant that harm would befall someone on the crew, or something could cause the mission to go wrong.

Flash differences:

           Axel only stayed in jail for a small amount of time due to ‘good behaviour’ but he is also weary about Jesse’s claims to him being the Tricksters heir

           Hartley isn’t a good guy although he’s not a bad guy either, he’s a Rogue for hire

Supergirl differences:

           Kara isn’t in a relationship with Mon-El UNLESS STATED!! same with Winn and Lya.

MY VERSES ARE OPEN, I usually end up creating a new one every week so feel free to give me a reason to keep them

INTERACTIONS

         So as I’ve said, I’m a multi-muse blog, a lot of people are put off by this I know, but it’s easier for me if I have one blog rather than a number of sideblogs because I have tried that once before and it didn’t work.

         If you want to send a meme then please, please, PLEASE, state the character you want, I have TEN muses so it becomes extremely difficult to choose who to answer with and not everyone is happy with my choice.

          I will try and add a character when I send a meme but in all honesty, I do forget from time to time.

          Each of my muses are different, and I play them differently; however their backgrounds remain the same, if you aren’t happy with how I play my characters then you can leave my blog, simple as that.

           Please tag your stuff, it’s not triggering to me, however I know a number of things can be triggering to my own followers and it will be easier for me as I am never completely sure about what to tag and what not to tag.             Never EVER godmod unless you have my permission, I dislike it greatly when someone decides my character is going to do something in their reply and actually writes them doing it. My characters are my own and even if you portray them somewhere else, we have separate minds. I will ALWAYS ask before directing your muse somewhere if out PLOT called for it.

              Due to being on mobile a lot, I am unable to reblog asks as threads without difficulty, so please make a new thread for it. You don’t have to link it to the ask, a title works perfectly. THREAD RULES

          I’m comfortable doing one liners, but they will sooner or later be turned into paragraphs and maybe even multiparagraphs (I’ve gone from one to six in two replies before now).

            I will use icons from time to time, I usually prefer beginning a new thread (particularly with someone new) with an icon but after a few replies they tend to be lost. Sometimes I’ll use gifs too but not always and don’t worry about using them yourself.

           I will happily add characters to our threads if needed, I don’t mind playing other CW or Disney characters, plus it gives me more inspiration and may result in more characters on my crew. HOWEVER, please, if you want to add characters, write them as well, don’t leave it all to me. NSFW AND SEXUALITY

           I’m a bit grey when it comes to the area of smut, I won’t write sex……..but describing situations for my characters I can do if it means teasing my RP partners muse. So NSFW will happen but open smut won’t……if that makes sense.

          ALL of my characters are within the LGBTQ+ community, I don’t even know why, they just come to me like that: The Snarts and Axel are Pan, Mick, Kara, Winn, Harry and Isabelle are Bi, while Hartley is gay and Gideon is Asexual

           Please tag your NSFW stuff, if you don’t then I will unfollow you. I have a nine year old sister who walks into my room without knocking so for NSFW stuff to appear on my dash……that would end bad.

SHIPPING!

         I am a multiship blog.

          I LOVE both platonic, familial and romantic ships.

          I’m open to new ships and will try anything as long as there is chemistry there and as long as it’s not incestuous.

          HOWEVER, I will NOT ship anyone other than Rip Hunter with Gideon, and that’s because of the chemistry they have on screen, not only that but the only Rip that I would romantically ship Gideon with is my main Rip as long as they are open to it. I will not ship her sexually with anyone because she is an AI, she is not human, no matter how human she acts. Whatever ship Gideon will have will be either platonic or familial

           I will be creating tags for my ships so that I have subverses for my main verses just to make things easier (even though it’s more complicated to do)

Crossovers

          I AM crossover friendly, however, there are only a few that I feel comfortable enough to do with my muses due to their medium and their backgrounds.

         Crossovers I am willing to do include (this list may be added too in time):

                 Prison Break

                 Doctor Who

                 Marvel (in moderation)

                 Leverage

                 Firefly 

#rules update #((psa)) #((you never leave a man behind (rules))

[ladystylestores]

That Old-School Runway Is Looking Pretty Good – WWD

https://pmcwwd.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/couture-stills-fall2021-1.png?w=640&h=415&crop=1

A thought crystalized clearly, before 9 a.m. New York time on Monday, less than five hours into haute couture’s first digital fashion week: The runway can’t reopen for business soon enough. The real, physical runway walked by real, live models in venues open to — hope against hope — live audiences.

This couture season was destined to be a learning curve, one necessitated by an unforeseen, cataclysmic global pandemic that attacked without notice, and certainly without respect for institutional events we once held sacrosanct, like fashion weeks. Thus, to critique fall 2020 haute couture’s creative output at all negatively may seem unfair and even small. But sometimes, “small” is reflected in the job description. The point here isn’t to criticize  — Oh, Lord, how pretentious are some of these film shorts (but, oh, Lord, how pretentious are some of these film shorts) — but rather to note that, early on, this digital fashion week is making the live show model feel plenty relevant, and even essential.

“I think [the week] won’t have the same splendor as a normal haute couture fashion week,” Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion and president of Chanel SAS, told WWD on Monday. He nailed it.

Technology has changed our lives with more power, speed and wonder than we could possibly have imagined 20 years ago. But fall’s early couture showings indicate that digital has a long way to go — light years — before it can replace the live fashion event. Oddly, watching these short films under the current forced intimacy — home alone — one was reminded of the genuine, enjoyable intimacy of actually “being there,” an intimacy borne of the gathering of a finite number of people in a finite space watching a one-time-only event, shared communally. It doesn’t get much more intimate than that.

To expect the short-films construct to substitute fully for fashion shows, immediately and seamlessly, is ridiculous; film and live performance are not the same, and this inaugural digital fashion week was orchestrated in haste. But who expected to be over it midday through Day One?

Since March, the haute houses have had to shift gears on a dime to try to make compelling brand statements for fall — perhaps inclusive of a real collection, perhaps not — in a medium not previously utilized for that specific purpose in a major way. At the same time, as a genre, fashion film/video is no longer special. It’s everything and everywhere, a 24/7 onslaught, from high-minded to cheesy and from mega-brand messaging to influencer/editor musings on topics from red-carpet winners to the best summer t-shirt. To be memorable, a fashion film must resonate with power. But watching back-to-back on Monday, the viewing got dull.

For some reason, fashion seems to have decided that “interesting” house-messaging must be capital-A artful, with moods registering between soulful and downright dark, sometimes to the point of skin-crawling pretension. That was the case with Monday’s first seven offerings. One by one, they’re fine; some are even beautiful. One after the other, they made for an exhausting litany of heartfelt, ethereal, introspective and sober — in too heavy a dose for one workday morning.

Schiaparelli opened the couture film festival with a mini feature on creative director Daniel Roseberry’s “Collection Imaginaire” — so titled because the collection won’t be produced. Rather, from his favorite outdoor perch — Washington Square Park in Manhattan, far away from the house headquarters on Place Vendôme — Roseberry sketches out the collection that’s in his mind. No words, just intense drawing scored with intense music against (happily) a beautiful blue-sky day.

Next on the schedule, Ulyana Sergeenko’s film takes the respect-for-craft route, highlighting the outside Russian lacemakers with whom the designer works before shifting focus to her atelier in Moscow. Reverential scenes of busy workers are spliced with photos of the Forties Hollywood sirens who inspire Sergeenko’s work. The film closes with a fast-moving take on a fashion show, a Busby Berkeley-type kaleidoscope of models, only digital, and one of Monday’s few overtly upbeat elements.

Maurizio Galante’s film is seven minutes of a woman walking downstairs. Stairs that appear to be elegant Haussmann-era Parisian stairs, but stairs nonetheless. She descends to voiceover incantations of color names delivered with great passion by a female speaker: “Bleu! Bleu! BLEEEU!” (Add 12 more “bleus.”) “Mauve! Mauve! Mauve! (Add nine more “mauves.”)

Iris Van Herpen enlisted filmmaker Ryan McDaniels and “Game of Thrones” actress Carice van Houten for her film, a mesmerizing study of a single dress — white structured petals with black center filaments — in her signature oeuvre of poetic high tech. Despite some dense accompanying show notes, the film itself is dialogue-free, a creative treatment shaping up as couture’s first bona fide trend.

Through much of the morning, the clothes’ screen time varied, from no real clothes at all at Schiaparelli (though Roseberry’s illustrations project a distinct power-woman attitude with dashes of house-proud surrealism) to Van Herpen’s single dress to Sergeenko’s mini collection, each look shown in full focus. Galante’s stair-walker has numerous costume changes which look lovely — what you can see of them, anyway. Given the moody-broodiness of it all — including the blurs of those passionately identified hues — the clothes were hardly the point.

By the time Maison Rabih Kayrouz and Ralph & Russo aired at 10 and 11, one couldn’t help but delight in sightings of their orange and hot pink dresses, respectively. Like Van Herpen, Kayrouz focuses on the creation of a single dress, his crafted entirely from strips of orange ribbon. The film highlights the dress’ journey from Beirut to Paris, against captivating music by the singer Shadia, which offered distinctive relief from the morning’s more tedious soundtracks.

Ralph & Russo’s Tamara Ralph provided a different kind of relief. She opted off the film artistry path in favor of speaking — yes, words — straight-on into the camera, for a while at least. She discussed her inspiration — the Seven Wonders of the World — before introducing her brand’s new avatar, Hauli, whose name “symbolizes strength and power.” Born of the necessity to find new ways to show clothes in the COVID-19 era, Hauli flaunts several form-fitting gowns against those Seven Wonders backdrops.

Yet, as always during couture, Monday was “Dior Day” — and a curious one, to boot, as once or twice the house’s visually exquisite film veered toward fashion satire. (See preening Narcissus, below.) Maria Grazia Chiuri commissioned Matteo Garrone — he directed last year’s Pinocchio — for “Le Mythe Dior.” In it, two handsome young porters carry a Dior dollhouse filled with miniature dresses through an enchanted woodland populated by magical creatures — nymphs, giant snail, living statue, mermaid, Adam and Eve (or some such naked couple kissing in a tree), Pan (or some such beautiful horned fellow) and Narcissus, whose Sophia Petrillo-meets-Horshack hairdo should have been rethought.

Along their route, the porters stop to allow the mythic types, some in states of semi-undress, to admire and select clothes. Now, the unwoke reality is that most of us look better in clothes than naked. But these young beauties are earthy goddesses (not to mention gorgeous young women in real life). The idea that they’d be so smitten with dresses from the human realm suggests unbecoming self-reverence by the house. Maria Grazia likely didn’t think of that, and she didn’t make the film, Garonne did — oh, well. A more difficult issue: the surprisingly un-diverse casting.

A fashion matter is less troubling. For this collection, Chiuri created 37 miniature looks — doll-size clothes, done to human scale. WWD’s preview featured mostly Fifties-inspired ball gowns. But the dresses chosen by the woodland lasses are more of the Mount Olympus peplos sort, a favorite of Chiuri’s, and nymph-appropriate. They’re beautiful, but the dichotomy makes the focus of the collection unclear. Film-wise, Garrone worked the no-dialogue approach, setting the non-verbal, spritely goings-on to the strains of monotonous music, with a running time of about 10 minutes. Though not at all sober, the lyrical-ethereal vibe at times flirted with tedium.

In aggregate, this sequence of films lacked a fashion “wow” factor, a film-short version of that instant when, at a live fashion show, a collection — or a single dress — just takes your breath takes away. Apart from that, while the productions weren’t downers per se, none delivered something that would feel great right now — a moment of full-on joyful fashion distraction from life’s current larger grim realities. Oh, for some haute joy. Or intrigue. Or something where the mind doesn’t wander for the duration. Or dialogue.

Still, be careful what you wish for. Morning session over, the time came for afternoon viewing. First up: Antonio Grimaldi’s film by Asia Argento, who also co-stars as the elder in an abysmal mother-daughter relationship. The work opens upon the ghostly daughter, clutching a bouquet of dreary flowers against her blood-stained white dress. She’s polite. She introduces herself: “My name is Ælektra, the Unhappy. My companion is grief.”

The runway can’t reopen for business soon enough.

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27 Writing Lessons & Hacks From Some of the Best Writers on the Planet

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27 Writing Lessons & Hacks From Some of the Best Writers on the Planet

photographer name

The amount of bad writing advice out there is astounding. People who have never published anything selling courses on how to make a career as a writer. Terribly written Medium articles telling you how to improve your prose. Marketing books from writers who not only haven’t sold many books—but their own marketing books don’t sell. All this bad advice adds up and makes a harder thing—an already difficult industry to navigate—even harder.

Over the last year, I’ve been lucky enough to interview some of the best writers on the planet for WritingRoutines.com. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to be able to ask Pulitzer Prize winners, #1 New York Times best-selling authors, brilliant novelists, talented journalists and expert communicators about how they practice their craft. I got valuable lessons from each one. I’ve collected a few of the best below, alongside some of the insights—or hacks as we call them today to get more people to click—from writers I wish were still alive to interview or ones I wish to interview someday if the opportunity presents itself.

I hope you learn as much from them as I did. Enjoy!

***

Devote Yourself to Someone Greater First

“If I am asked today to advise a young writer who has not yet made up his mind what way to go, I would try to persuade him to devote himself first to the work of someone greater, interpreting or translating him. If you are a beginner there is more security in such self-sacrifice than in your own creativity and nothing you ever do with all your heart is done in vain.”

— Stefan Zweig, author of The World of Yesterday and in the 1920’s and 1930’s was one of the most popular authors in the world

Wake Up Early And Read, Read, Read

“I wake up around 5am. I have 2-3 cups of coffee. I read and read and read for two hours. I read high quality literary fiction to be inspired, high quality non-fiction about a topic I am fascinated by in order to learn, I read inspirational or spiritual writing to feel that special something inside, and often I will spend some  time studying a game. Then I might read the literary fiction some more. At some point, I get the urge or the itch to put the books away. I go to my computer and start to write.”

—  James Altucher, author of Choose Yourself!, which the USA Today’s called one of “Best Business Books of All Time.”

Do Not Chase Exotic Locations to Write

“It was a time everyone was pressing wonderful houses on us. ‘I have a perfectly marvellous house for you to write in,’ they’d say. Of course no one needs marvellous houses to write in. I still knew that much. All you needed was one room. But somehow the next house always beckoned.”

— Budd Schulberg, author of What Makes Sammy Run? and the Academy Award-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront

Edit Ten Times

“I repeatedly edit it many times, at least ten. I just keep on doing it, until I can’t think of further improvements. I can’t say that is a process in any formal sense, simply a recognition that the “process” to date hasn’t worked very well and so it must continue. I don’t pretend this is efficient.”

— Tyler Cowen, economics professor, author of Average Is Over and contributor to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and many other publications

Nobody Gets Talker’s Block

“No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.”

— Seth Godin, New York Times bestselling author of Purple Cow and more than 20 other books

Do the Three Passes of Editing

“[My editing] rests on three passes. The first pass is when you write the best chapter you can. The second pass comes later once the whole book (or whole part of the book containing the chapter) is done. During this pass, I come back to the chapter on my computer and cut and tighten. The final pass is when I read through a printed version of the chapter on paper. Reading on paper is necessary if you’re going to root out odd constructions or minor errors.”

— Cal Newport, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Deep Work

The Only Way Out is Through

“The way out of this mess is through. A friend of mine who used to do long-distance running gave me some advice on dealing with pain as a writer. “What do you do about the cramps?” I asked. I was noticing they hit my in the gut usually at the three or four mile mark. I thought he’d have some great advice on how to avoid them altogether. In fact, I assumed this was the case. His answer surprised me, though. ‘Cramps? What do I do? I keep running, and eventually they go away. I run through the cramps.’ What do I do when I feel blocked? I write through the block.”  

— Jeff Goins, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Real Artists Don’t Starve

Sometimes You Just Need Some Good Earmuffs

“I’m an “absolute quiet” kind of person. If I’m writing at home, and there’s any noise at all, such as my wonderful hubby puttering around and coincidentally clearing his throat, I wear my Peltor Sport Ultimate 10 Hearing Protector Earmuffs. I’m so used to them that when I need to concentrate, I put them on even when there isn’t any noise. Earmuffs are like a signal to my brain—Okay, focus! On planes, I often wear noise canceling headphones.”  

— Dr. Barbara Oakley, bestselling author of A Mind for Numbers and former Army Captain

Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You

“What they want to hear is, ‘Here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script’…but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’”

— Steve Martin, author of Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life and award-winning actor and banjo player

Keep the Best in Mind

“It really depends on the genre of work I’m doing–I always try to keep models in mind, though the model will change depending on what I’m working on. For the book on Cato the Younger, Jimmy Soni and I were constantly referring to Tom Holland’s book on the Roman Republic, Rubicon; for our book on Claude Shannon, to James Gleick’s The Information and Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind. For my academic work, people like Danielle Allen are great models.”

— Rob Goodman, congressional speechwriter and co-author of A Mind at Play and Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar

Quit Your Bitching

“Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.”

― Cheryl Strayed, author of the number #1 New York Times bestseller Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things

Fix The Important Things

“Writer’s block is miserable and part of it can be just being in a really bad place. Sometimes if you’re just in a bad mental place, it doesn’t matter what work you put in. You have to fix bigger things than your writing.”

— Hari Kondabolu, the comic who the New York Times called “one of the most necessary political comedians working today.”

Get a Giant Sketchpad

“Notebooks have always been big for me, both in the early stages of a new project and as a way to get myself unstuck if I’m struggling. But I have giant, chicken-scratch handwriting, and would always end up jotting down thoughts over half a dozen pages and then never really looking at them again. I have probably fifty illegible notebooks sitting in desk drawers, and I would easily have filled fifty more had I not been introduced to the most elegant solution by a friend, the author Ashley Cardiff: A sketchpad. A 9-by-12-inch artist’s sketchpad. This has been my great revelation. It’s unlined so I can read my bad handwriting and large enough that I can group several ideas together on the same page. Plus, it gives me an excuse to buy fancy mechanical pencils.”

— Liana Maeby, author of South on Highland, which actor/writer BJ Novak called “the kind of book kids will steal from each other.”

It’s All Material

“I’m never not working on material. Every second of my existence, I am thinking, ‘Can I do something with that?’” [By the way, this advice echoes a phrase I’ve learned from author Robert Greene, “It’s all material.” Meaning everything bad that happens, everything frustrating or delayed or disappointing—all of it can be fuel for a book. It can teach you something that helps you improve your business, it can become a story you pass along to a friend.]

— Jerry Seinfeld, creator of Seinfeld and named by Comedy Central the “12th Greatest Stand-up Comedian of All Time.”

Understand How the Pieces Fit Together

“To write a clean and fluent piece of any kind, you have to understand how its various parts fit together—how a change here will affect something over there. With a short piece, you never lose sight of the whole because you can read and reread it many times as you work. That’s what I do. I make a change and then I read the whole piece to see how it works. But I can’t do that with a book, so I have to find other ways to stay oriented. I reread or skim sections of the book that I know relate to the part I’m working on, I keep notes about the larger structure, and I use Word’s phrase-search function to move around and check up on things. I also make a huge effort to commit as much of the book as I can to memory. It’s exhausting and it seems psychologically damaging in some way, but it helps me to understand when jokes need to be repeated, how much space needs to intervene between similar kinds of scenes, how ideas should be patterned, etc.”

— Aaron Thier, author of Mr. Eternity and recipient of a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts

Run to Keep Yourself Sane

“The twin activities of running and writing keep the writer reasonably sane and with the hope, however illusory and temporary, of control.” [This is not unlike many other writers—including Murakami and Malcolm Gladwell—who use running as a coping mechanism.]

— Joyce Carol Oates, author of over 40 novels, including Them, winner of the National Book Award  

Before You Write, Crystallize Your Thinking

“If I’m just starting, I never consider the page blank. I’ve been writing in my head long before I sit down at the keyboard. In fact, I sometimes start inadvertently, by describing to someone what I’m doing. Conversation often crystallizes my own thinking far more effectively than solitary reflection. When I put the first words down, I know they’re likely to change, which I find liberating—no need to get it perfect the first time. But I want the first sentence to set a tone or indicate a theme for that chapter, so I have to start with a clear sense of the meaning of the events that follow, and how I want the reader to feel.”

— Pulitzer Prize winner T.J. Stiles, author of Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

Let the Play Accumulate

“Don’t start writing the play at once, but get a little notebook and put down everything you think about your play in the notebook, just as the ideas come to you without rhyme or reason especially. Let the play accumulate, as I call it; let it percolate and stew in your mind; and write down any ideas, bits of dialogue, descriptions, words—anything you think you might be able to use. Many of these things will come to you unconsciously while you are walking home from school, bathing, mowing the lawn; be sure to get them all into your notebook.”

— E.P. Conkle, professor emeritus of drama whose plays have been produced on Broadway

Take the Necessary Medicine

“I tend to edit heavily and repeatedly as I go along, so I don’t make the distinction, at least by myself. For the books that I’ve written for a larger public, however, I’ve had the help of an immensely gifted editor (Alane Mason, at Norton), so there I do separate out the tasks: in effect my own writing/editing; and then a further editing after receiving her suggestions. I tend to hate the latter experience, though I recognize that it is almost invariably good—a bit like swallowing disagreeable but essential medicine.”

— Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve, a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award winner

To Beat Writer’s Block, Double Down on Research

“When I have writer’s block it is because I have not done enough research or I have not thought hard enough about the subject about which I’m writing. That’s a signal for me to go back to the archives or to go back into my thoughts and think through what it is I am supposed to be doing.”

— MacArthur “Genius” and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

Always Ask These Questions

“What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?” Then finish with these final two questions: ‘Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?’”

— George Orwell, famous author of 1984 and Animal Farm

You Don’t Need a Vomit Draft

“Writers are usually encouraged to write a “vomit draft” and just get something out, however terrible it is, in order to overcome The Fear, get some momentum, and move to more of an editing mindset, where’s it’s less scary to make progress. I don’t do that. I think that’s just a trick to try and lower the stakes so you can overcome procrastination and The Fear. And while it’s good for that, I think it’s bad in the long haul because you’re producing a lot of junk and that’s going to be hard to fully clean up. I treat writing a lot more like architecture. You wouldn’t work without a blueprint, construct a crappy building, then knock it down and build a better one. That would be ridiculous. You’d put together a really tight blueprint, then construct the building once, the right way, and if it needs tweaks, they’re relatively small. As the old saying goes: ‘Measure twice, cut once.’”

— Eric Barker, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Barking Up The Wrong Tree and creator of the popular blog of the same name

Keep the Momentum

“Never stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether.”

—Jeanette Winterson, a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award and author best known for Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which was adapted into a BBC drama

You Don’t Need to be Kissed by a Muse

When asked if writing comes easy: “Haha, no, I’ve not been kissed by a muse. For me, writing is a craft that needs constant honing.”

— Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, which won the Royal Society Science Book Award 2016 and the LA Times Book Prize 2016.

Write for the Ear

“I’ve got a theory that most writers are either frustrated musicians or painters – and which of them you are depends on whether you write for the ear or the eye.  As a former musician and former speechwriter, I definitely write for the ear. I listen to music all the time for inspiration and energy. I tend to make playlists as the sound track for writing different books.  They serve as snapshots in time.  So, I’ve got one for Wingnuts – lots of The National, Drive-By-Truckers, Radiohead and Randy Newman – and one for Washington’s Farewell that’s more classical, jazz, the Americana series by Chris Thile, Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer and the soundtrack to Hamilton.”

— John Avlon, author of Washington’s Farewell and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast

Learn How to Take Brutally Frank Criticism

“I try to imagine comments, questions, and criticisms that the book will generate. Then I try to rehearse the reply or answer. My friends are great critics of my writing and I always make sure they have read the drafts and galleys and been brutally frank with me about their reactions. They know I can take it.”

— Richard Clarke, former Assistant Secretary of State who has served under three different Presidents in different roles and author of Warnings: Finding Cassandras To Stop Catastrophes

Wake Up and Get After It

“I remember Salman Rushdie telling me how he gives it the first energy of the day. As soon as he gets up, he goes to his office and starts writing. He’s still in his pajamas. He believes there is a “little package of creative energy that was nourished by sleep,” and he doesn’t want to waste it. He works for an hour or two and then goes to brush his teeth. I have a very similar approach. Only I brush my teeth before I start. I guess that’s my pre-writing ritual.”

— Cal Fussman, best known for the “What I’ve Learned” Esquire column and a master interviewer who has talked to the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Muhammad Ali, John Wooden, Richard Branson

***

For more writing hacks from other brilliant writers and one amazing interview sent directly to your inbox each week, check out WritingRoutines.com

Read more: http://thoughtcatalog.com/

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27 Writing Lessons & Hacks From Some of the Best Writers on the Planet

photographer name

The amount of bad writing advice out there is astounding. People who have never published anything selling courses on how to make a career as a writer. Terribly written Medium articles telling you how to improve your prose. Marketing books from writers who not only haven’t sold many books—but their own marketing books don’t sell. All this bad advice adds up and makes a harder thing—an already difficult industry to navigate—even harder.

Over the last year, I’ve been lucky enough to interview some of the best writers on the planet for WritingRoutines.com. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to be able to ask Pulitzer Prize winners, #1 New York Times best-selling authors, brilliant novelists, talented journalists and expert communicators about how they practice their craft. I got valuable lessons from each one. I’ve collected a few of the best below, alongside some of the insights—or hacks as we call them today to get more people to click—from writers I wish were still alive to interview or ones I wish to interview someday if the opportunity presents itself.

I hope you learn as much from them as I did. Enjoy!

***

Devote Yourself to Someone Greater First

“If I am asked today to advise a young writer who has not yet made up his mind what way to go, I would try to persuade him to devote himself first to the work of someone greater, interpreting or translating him. If you are a beginner there is more security in such self-sacrifice than in your own creativity and nothing you ever do with all your heart is done in vain.”

— Stefan Zweig, author of The World of Yesterday and in the 1920’s and 1930’s was one of the most popular authors in the world

Wake Up Early And Read, Read, Read

“I wake up around 5am. I have 2-3 cups of coffee. I read and read and read for two hours. I read high quality literary fiction to be inspired, high quality non-fiction about a topic I am fascinated by in order to learn, I read inspirational or spiritual writing to feel that special something inside, and often I will spend some  time studying a game. Then I might read the literary fiction some more. At some point, I get the urge or the itch to put the books away. I go to my computer and start to write.”

—  James Altucher, author of Choose Yourself!, which the USA Today’s called one of “Best Business Books of All Time.”

Do Not Chase Exotic Locations to Write

“It was a time everyone was pressing wonderful houses on us. ‘I have a perfectly marvellous house for you to write in,’ they’d say. Of course no one needs marvellous houses to write in. I still knew that much. All you needed was one room. But somehow the next house always beckoned.”

— Budd Schulberg, author of What Makes Sammy Run? and the Academy Award-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront

Edit Ten Times

“I repeatedly edit it many times, at least ten. I just keep on doing it, until I can’t think of further improvements. I can’t say that is a process in any formal sense, simply a recognition that the “process” to date hasn’t worked very well and so it must continue. I don’t pretend this is efficient.”

— Tyler Cowen, economics professor, author of Average Is Over and contributor to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and many other publications

Nobody Gets Talker’s Block

“No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.”

— Seth Godin, New York Times bestselling author of Purple Cow and more than 20 other books

Do the Three Passes of Editing

“[My editing] rests on three passes. The first pass is when you write the best chapter you can. The second pass comes later once the whole book (or whole part of the book containing the chapter) is done. During this pass, I come back to the chapter on my computer and cut and tighten. The final pass is when I read through a printed version of the chapter on paper. Reading on paper is necessary if you’re going to root out odd constructions or minor errors.”

— Cal Newport, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Deep Work

The Only Way Out is Through

“The way out of this mess is through. A friend of mine who used to do long-distance running gave me some advice on dealing with pain as a writer. “What do you do about the cramps?” I asked. I was noticing they hit my in the gut usually at the three or four mile mark. I thought he’d have some great advice on how to avoid them altogether. In fact, I assumed this was the case. His answer surprised me, though. ‘Cramps? What do I do? I keep running, and eventually they go away. I run through the cramps.’ What do I do when I feel blocked? I write through the block.”  

— Jeff Goins, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Real Artists Don’t Starve

Sometimes You Just Need Some Good Earmuffs

“I’m an “absolute quiet” kind of person. If I’m writing at home, and there’s any noise at all, such as my wonderful hubby puttering around and coincidentally clearing his throat, I wear my Peltor Sport Ultimate 10 Hearing Protector Earmuffs. I’m so used to them that when I need to concentrate, I put them on even when there isn’t any noise. Earmuffs are like a signal to my brain—Okay, focus! On planes, I often wear noise canceling headphones.”  

— Dr. Barbara Oakley, bestselling author of A Mind for Numbers and former Army Captain

Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You

“What they want to hear is, ‘Here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script’…but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’”

— Steve Martin, author of Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life and award-winning actor and banjo player

Keep the Best in Mind

“It really depends on the genre of work I’m doing–I always try to keep models in mind, though the model will change depending on what I’m working on. For the book on Cato the Younger, Jimmy Soni and I were constantly referring to Tom Holland’s book on the Roman Republic, Rubicon; for our book on Claude Shannon, to James Gleick’s The Information and Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind. For my academic work, people like Danielle Allen are great models.”

— Rob Goodman, congressional speechwriter and co-author of A Mind at Play and Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar

Quit Your Bitching

“Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.”

― Cheryl Strayed, author of the number #1 New York Times bestseller Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things

Fix The Important Things

“Writer’s block is miserable and part of it can be just being in a really bad place. Sometimes if you’re just in a bad mental place, it doesn’t matter what work you put in. You have to fix bigger things than your writing.”

— Hari Kondabolu, the comic who the New York Times called “one of the most necessary political comedians working today.”

Get a Giant Sketchpad

“Notebooks have always been big for me, both in the early stages of a new project and as a way to get myself unstuck if I’m struggling. But I have giant, chicken-scratch handwriting, and would always end up jotting down thoughts over half a dozen pages and then never really looking at them again. I have probably fifty illegible notebooks sitting in desk drawers, and I would easily have filled fifty more had I not been introduced to the most elegant solution by a friend, the author Ashley Cardiff: A sketchpad. A 9-by-12-inch artist’s sketchpad. This has been my great revelation. It’s unlined so I can read my bad handwriting and large enough that I can group several ideas together on the same page. Plus, it gives me an excuse to buy fancy mechanical pencils.”

— Liana Maeby, author of South on Highland, which actor/writer BJ Novak called “the kind of book kids will steal from each other.”

It’s All Material

“I’m never not working on material. Every second of my existence, I am thinking, ‘Can I do something with that?’” [By the way, this advice echoes a phrase I’ve learned from author Robert Greene, “It’s all material.” Meaning everything bad that happens, everything frustrating or delayed or disappointing—all of it can be fuel for a book. It can teach you something that helps you improve your business, it can become a story you pass along to a friend.]

— Jerry Seinfeld, creator of Seinfeld and named by Comedy Central the “12th Greatest Stand-up Comedian of All Time.”

Understand How the Pieces Fit Together

“To write a clean and fluent piece of any kind, you have to understand how its various parts fit together—how a change here will affect something over there. With a short piece, you never lose sight of the whole because you can read and reread it many times as you work. That’s what I do. I make a change and then I read the whole piece to see how it works. But I can’t do that with a book, so I have to find other ways to stay oriented. I reread or skim sections of the book that I know relate to the part I’m working on, I keep notes about the larger structure, and I use Word’s phrase-search function to move around and check up on things. I also make a huge effort to commit as much of the book as I can to memory. It’s exhausting and it seems psychologically damaging in some way, but it helps me to understand when jokes need to be repeated, how much space needs to intervene between similar kinds of scenes, how ideas should be patterned, etc.”

— Aaron Thier, author of Mr. Eternity and recipient of a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts

Run to Keep Yourself Sane

“The twin activities of running and writing keep the writer reasonably sane and with the hope, however illusory and temporary, of control.” [This is not unlike many other writers—including Murakami and Malcolm Gladwell—who use running as a coping mechanism.]

— Joyce Carol Oates, author of over 40 novels, including Them, winner of the National Book Award  

Before You Write, Crystallize Your Thinking

“If I’m just starting, I never consider the page blank. I’ve been writing in my head long before I sit down at the keyboard. In fact, I sometimes start inadvertently, by describing to someone what I’m doing. Conversation often crystallizes my own thinking far more effectively than solitary reflection. When I put the first words down, I know they’re likely to change, which I find liberating—no need to get it perfect the first time. But I want the first sentence to set a tone or indicate a theme for that chapter, so I have to start with a clear sense of the meaning of the events that follow, and how I want the reader to feel.”

— Pulitzer Prize winner T.J. Stiles, author of Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

Let the Play Accumulate

“Don’t start writing the play at once, but get a little notebook and put down everything you think about your play in the notebook, just as the ideas come to you without rhyme or reason especially. Let the play accumulate, as I call it; let it percolate and stew in your mind; and write down any ideas, bits of dialogue, descriptions, words—anything you think you might be able to use. Many of these things will come to you unconsciously while you are walking home from school, bathing, mowing the lawn; be sure to get them all into your notebook.”

— E.P. Conkle, professor emeritus of drama whose plays have been produced on Broadway

Take the Necessary Medicine

“I tend to edit heavily and repeatedly as I go along, so I don’t make the distinction, at least by myself. For the books that I’ve written for a larger public, however, I’ve had the help of an immensely gifted editor (Alane Mason, at Norton), so there I do separate out the tasks: in effect my own writing/editing; and then a further editing after receiving her suggestions. I tend to hate the latter experience, though I recognize that it is almost invariably good—a bit like swallowing disagreeable but essential medicine.”

— Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve, a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award winner

To Beat Writer’s Block, Double Down on Research

“When I have writer’s block it is because I have not done enough research or I have not thought hard enough about the subject about which I’m writing. That’s a signal for me to go back to the archives or to go back into my thoughts and think through what it is I am supposed to be doing.”

— MacArthur “Genius” and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

Always Ask These Questions

“What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?” Then finish with these final two questions: ‘Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?’”

— George Orwell, famous author of 1984 and Animal Farm

You Don’t Need a Vomit Draft

“Writers are usually encouraged to write a “vomit draft” and just get something out, however terrible it is, in order to overcome The Fear, get some momentum, and move to more of an editing mindset, where’s it’s less scary to make progress. I don’t do that. I think that’s just a trick to try and lower the stakes so you can overcome procrastination and The Fear. And while it’s good for that, I think it’s bad in the long haul because you’re producing a lot of junk and that’s going to be hard to fully clean up. I treat writing a lot more like architecture. You wouldn’t work without a blueprint, construct a crappy building, then knock it down and build a better one. That would be ridiculous. You’d put together a really tight blueprint, then construct the building once, the right way, and if it needs tweaks, they’re relatively small. As the old saying goes: ‘Measure twice, cut once.’”

— Eric Barker, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Barking Up The Wrong Tree and creator of the popular blog of the same name

Keep the Momentum

“Never stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether.”

—Jeanette Winterson, a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award and author best known for Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which was adapted into a BBC drama

You Don’t Need to be Kissed by a Muse

When asked if writing comes easy: “Haha, no, I’ve not been kissed by a muse. For me, writing is a craft that needs constant honing.”

— Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, which won the Royal Society Science Book Award 2016 and the LA Times Book Prize 2016.

Write for the Ear

“I’ve got a theory that most writers are either frustrated musicians or painters – and which of them you are depends on whether you write for the ear or the eye.  As a former musician and former speechwriter, I definitely write for the ear. I listen to music all the time for inspiration and energy. I tend to make playlists as the sound track for writing different books.  They serve as snapshots in time.  So, I’ve got one for Wingnuts – lots of The National, Drive-By-Truckers, Radiohead and Randy Newman – and one for Washington’s Farewell that’s more classical, jazz, the Americana series by Chris Thile, Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer and the soundtrack to Hamilton.”

— John Avlon, author of Washington’s Farewell and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast

Learn How to Take Brutally Frank Criticism

“I try to imagine comments, questions, and criticisms that the book will generate. Then I try to rehearse the reply or answer. My friends are great critics of my writing and I always make sure they have read the drafts and galleys and been brutally frank with me about their reactions. They know I can take it.”

— Richard Clarke, former Assistant Secretary of State who has served under three different Presidents in different roles and author of Warnings: Finding Cassandras To Stop Catastrophes

Wake Up and Get After It

“I remember Salman Rushdie telling me how he gives it the first energy of the day. As soon as he gets up, he goes to his office and starts writing. He’s still in his pajamas. He believes there is a “little package of creative energy that was nourished by sleep,” and he doesn’t want to waste it. He works for an hour or two and then goes to brush his teeth. I have a very similar approach. Only I brush my teeth before I start. I guess that’s my pre-writing ritual.”

— Cal Fussman, best known for the “What I’ve Learned” Esquire column and a master interviewer who has talked to the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Muhammad Ali, John Wooden, Richard Branson

***

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[referenceblog2017]

19971228

Unknown author

The Story Behind a Nonfiction NovelJanuary 16, 1966

The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel

By GEORGE PLIMPTON

n Cold Blood" is remarkable for its objectivity--nowhere, despite his involvement, does the author intrude. In the following interview, done a few weeks ago, Truman Capote presents his own views on the case, its principals, and in particular he discusses the new literary art form which he calls the nonfiction novel...

Why did you select this particular subject matter of murder; had you previously been interested in crime?

Not really, no. During the last years I've learned a good deal about crime, and the origins of the homicidal mentality. Still, it is a layman's knowledge and I don't pretend to anything deeper. The motivating factor in my choice of material--that is, choosing to write a true account of an actual murder case--was altogether literary. The decision was based on a theory I've harbored since I first began to write professionally, which is well over 20 years ago. It seemed to me that journalism, reportage, could be forced to yield a serious new art form: the "nonfiction novel," as I thought of it. Several admirable reporters--Rebecca West for one, and Joseph Mitchell and Lillian Ross--have shown the possibilities of narrative reportage; and Miss Ross, in her brilliant "Picture," achieved at least a nonfiction novella. Still, on the whole, journalism is the most underestimated, the least explored of literary mediums.

Why should that be so?

Because few first-class creative writers have ever bothered with journalism, except as a sideline, "hackwork," something to be done when the creative spirit is lacking, or as a means of making money quickly. Such writers say in effect: Why should we trouble with factual writing when we're able to invent our own stories, contrive our own characters and themes?--journalism is only literary photography, and unbecoming to the serious writer's artistic dignity.

Another deterrent--and not the smallest--is that the reporter, unlike the fantasist, has to deal with actual people who have real names. If they feel maligned, or just contrary, or greedy, they enrich lawyers (though rarely themselves) by instigating libel actions. This last is certainly a factor to consider, a most oppressive and repressive one. Because it's indeed difficult to portray, in any meaningful depth, another being, his appearance, speech, mentality, without to some degree, and often for quite trifling cause, offending him. The truth seems to be that no one likes to see himself described as he is, or cares to see exactly set down what he said and did. Well, even I even can understand that--because I don't like it myself when I am the sitter and not the portraitist; the frailty of egos!--and the more accurate the strokes, the greater the resentment.

When I first formed my theories concerning the nonfiction novel, many people with whom I discussed the matter were unsympathetic. They felt that what I proposed, a narrative form that employed all the techniques of fictional art but was nevertheless immaculately factual, was little more than a literary solution for fatigued novelists suffering from "failure of imagination." Personally, I felt that this attitude represented a "failure of imagination" on their part.

Of course a properly done piece of narrative reporting requires imagination!--and a good deal of special technical equipment that is usually beyond the resources--and I don't doubt the interests-- of most fictional writers: an ability to transcribe verbatim long conversations, and to do so without taking notes or using tape-recordings. Also, it is necessary to have a 20/20 eye for visual detail--in this sense, it is quite true that one must be a "literary photographer," though an exceedingly selective one. But, above all, the reporter must be able to empathize with personalities outside his usual imaginative range, mentalities unlike his own, kinds of people he would never have written about had he not been forced to by encountering them inside the journalistic situation. This last is what first attracted me to the notion of narrative reportage.

It seems to me that most contemporary novelists, especially the Americans and the French, are too subjective, mesmerized by private demons; they're enraptured by their navels, and confined by a view that ends with their own toes. If I were naming names, I'd name myself among others. At any rate, I did at one time feel an artistic need to escape my self-created world. I wanted to exchange it, creatively speaking, for the everyday objective world we all inhabit. Not that I'd never written nonfiction before--I kept journals, and had published a small truthful book of travel impressions: "Local Color." But I had never attempted an ambitious piece of reportage until 1956, when I wrote "The Muses Are Heard," an account of the first theatrical cultural exchange between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.--that is, the "Porgy and Bess" tour of Russia. It was published in The New Yorker, the only magazine I know of that encourages the serious practitioners of this art form. Later, I contributed a few other reportorial finger-exercises to the same magazine. Finally, I felt equipped and ready to undertake a full-scale narrative--in other words, a "nonfiction novel."

How does John Hersey's "Hiroshima" or Oscar Lewis's "Children of Sanchez" compare with "the nonfiction novel?"

The Oscar Lewis book is a documentary, a job of editing from tapes, and however skillful and moving, it is not creative writing. "Hiroshima" is creative--in the sense that Hersey isn't taking something off a tape recorder and editing it--but it still hasn't got anything to do with what I'm talking about. "Hiroshima" is a strict classical journalistic piece. What is closer is what Lillian Ross did with "Picture." Or my own book, "The Muses Are Heard"--which uses the techniques of the comic short novel.

It was natural that I should progress from that experiment, and get myself in much deeper water. I read in the paper the other day that I had been quoted as saying that reporting is now more interesting than fiction. Now that's not what I said, and it's important to me to get this straight. What I think is that reporting can be made as interesting as fiction, and done as artistically--underlining those two "as" es. I don't mean to say that one is a superior form to the other. I feel that creative reportage has been neglected and has great relevance to 20th-century writing. And while it can be an artistic outlet for the creative writer, it has never been particularly explored.

What is your opinion of the so-called New Journalism--as it is practiced particularly at The Herald Tribune?

If you mean James Breslin and Tom Wolfe, and that crowd, they have nothing to do with creative journalism--in the sense that I use the term--because neither of them, nor any of that school of reporting, have the proper fictional technical equipment. It's useless for a writer whose talent is essentially journalistic to attempt creative reportage, because it simply won't work. A writer like Rebecca West--always a good reporter--has never really used the form of creative reportage because the form, by necessity, demands that the writer be completely in control of fictional techniques--which means that, to be a good creative reporter, you have to be a very good fiction writer.

Would it be fair to say, then, since many reporters use nonfiction techniques--Meyer Levin in "Compulsion," Walter Lord in "A Night to Remember," and so forth--that the nonfiction novel can be defined by the degree of the fiction skills involved, and theextentof the author's absorption with his subject?

"Compulsion" is a fictional novel suggested by fact, but no way bound to it. I never read the other book. The nonfiction novel should not be confused with the documentary novel--a popular and interesting but impure genre, which allows all the latitude of the fiction writer, but usually contains neither the persuasiveness of fact nor the poetic attitude fiction is capable of reaching. The author lets his imagination run riot over the facts! If I sound querulous or arrogant about this, it's not only that I have to protect my child, but that I truly don't believe anything like it exists in the history of journalism.

What is the first step in producing a "nonfiction novel?"

The difficulty was to choose a promising subject. If you intend to spend three or four or five years with a book, as I planned to do, then you want to be reasonably certain that the material not soon "date." The content of much journalism so swiftly does, which is another of the medium's deterrents. A number of ideas occurred, but one after the other, and for one reason or another, each was eventually discarded, often after I'd done considerable preliminary work. Then one morning in November, 1959, while flicking through The New York Times, I encountered on a deep-inside page, this headline: Wealthy Farmer, 3 of Family Slain.

The story was brief, just several paragraphs stating the facts: A Mr. Herbert W. Clutter, who had served on the Farm Credit Board during the Eisenhower Administration, his wife and two teen-aged children, had been brutally, entirely mysteriously, murdered on a lonely wheat and cattle ranch in a remote part of Kansas. There was nothing really exceptional about it; one reads items concerning multiple murders many times in the course of a year.

Then why did you decide it was the subject you had been looking for?

I didn't. Not immediately. But after reading the story it suddenly struck me that a crime, the study of one such, might provide the broad scope I needed to write the kind of book I wanted to write. Moreover, the human heart being what it is, murder was a theme not likely to darken and yellow with time.

I thought about it all that November day, and part of the next; and then I said to myself: Well, why not this crime? The Clutter case. Why not pack up and go to Kansas and see what happens? Of course it was rather frightening thought--to arrive alone in a small, strange town, a town in the grip of an unsolved mass murder. Still, the circumstances of the place being altogether unfamiliar, geographically and atmospherically, made it that much more tempting. Everything would seem freshly minted--the people, their accents and attitudes, the landscape, its contours, the weather. All this, it seemed to me, could only sharpen my eye and quicken my ear.

In the end, I did not go alone. I went with a lifelong friend, Harper Lee. She is a gifted woman, courageous, and with a warmth that instantly kindles most people, however suspicious or dour. She had recently completed a first novel ("To Kill a Mockingbird"), and, feeling at loose ends, she said she would accompany me in the role of assistant researchist.

We traveled by train to St. Louis, changed trains and went to Manhattan, Kan., where we got off to consult Dr. James McClain, president of Mr. Clutter's alma mater, Kansas State University. Dr. McClain, a gracious man, seemed a little nonplussed by our interest in the case; but he gave us letters of introduction to several people in western Kansas. We rented a car and drove some 400 miles to Garden City. It was twilight when we arrived. I remember the car-radio was playing, and we heard: "Police authorities, continuing their investigation of the tragic Clutter slayings, have requested that anyone with pertinent information please contact the Sheriff's office. . . ."

If I had realized then what the future held, I never would have stopped in Garden City. I would have driven straight on. Like a bat out of hell.

What was Harper Lee's contribution to your work?

She kept me company when I was based out there. I suppose she was with me about two months altogether. She went on a number of interviews; she typed her own notes, and I had these and could refer to them. She was extremely helpful in the beginning, when we weren't making much headway with the towns people, by making friends with the wives of the people I wanted to meet. She became friendly with all the churchgoers. A Kansas paper said the other day that everyone out there was so wonderfully cooperative because I was a famous writer. The fact of the matter is that not one single person in the town had ever heard of me.

How long did it take for the town to thaw out enough so that you were accepted and you could get to your interviewing?

About a month. I think they finally just realized that we were there to stay--they'd have to make the best of it. Under the circumstances, they were suspicious. After all, there was an unsolved murder case, and the people in the town were tired of the thing, and frightened. But then after it all quieted down--after Perry and Dick were arrested--that was when we did most of the original interviews. Some of them went on for three years--though not on the same subject, of course. I suppose if I used just 20 percent of all the material I put together over those years of interviewing, I'd still have a book two thousand pages long!

How much research did you do other than through interviews with the principals in the case?

Oh, a great deal. I did months of comparative research on murder, murderers, the criminal mentality, and I interviewed quite a number of murderers--solely to give me a perspective on these two boys. And then crime. I didn't know anything about crime or criminals when I began to do the book. I certainly do now! I'd say 80 percent of the research I did I have never used. But it gave me such a grounding that I never had any hesitation in my consideration of the subject.

What was the most singular interview you conducted?

I suppose the most startled interviewee was Mr. Bell, the meat-packing executive from Omaha. He was the man who picked up Perry and Dick when they were hitchhiking across Nebraska. They planned to murder him and then make off with his car. Quite unaware of all this, Bell was saved, as you'll remember, just as Perry was going to smash in his head from the seat behind, because he slowed down to pick up another hitchhiker, a Negro. The boys told me this story, and they had this man's business card. I decided to interview him. I wrote him a letter, but got no answer. Then I wrote a letter to the personnel manager of the meat-packing company in Omaha, asking if they had a Mr. Bell in their employ. I told them I wanted to talk to him about a pair of hitchhikers he'd picked up four months previously. The manager wrote back and said they did have a Mr. Bell on their staff, but it was surely the wrong Mr. Bell, since it was against company policy for employees to take hitchhikers in their cars. So I telephoned Mr. Bell and when he got on the phone he was very brusque; he said I didn't know what I was talking about.

The only thing to do was to go to Omaha personally. I went up there and walked in on Mr. Bell and put two photographs down on his desk. I asked him if he recognized the two men. He said, why? So I told him that the two were the hitchhikers he said he had never given a ride to, that they had planned to kill him and then bury him in the prairie--and how close they'd come to it. Well, he turned every conceivable kind of color. You can imagine. He recognized them all right. He was quite cooperative about telling me about the trip, but he asked me not to use his real name. There are only three people in the book whose names I've changed--his, the convict Perry admired so much (Willie-Jay he's called in the book), and also I changed Perry Smith's sister's name.

How long after you went to Kansas did you sense the form of the book? Were there many false starts?

I worked for a year on the notes before I ever wrote one line. And when I wrote the first word, I had done the entire book in outline, down to the finest detail. Except for the last part, the final dispensation of the case--that was an evolving case--that was an evolving matter. It began, of course, with interviews--with all the different characters of the book. Let me give you two examples of how I worked from these interviews. In the first part of the book--the part that's called "The Last to See Them Alive"--there's a long narration, word for word, given by the school teacher who went with the sheriff to the Clutter house and found the four bodies. Well, I simply set that into the book as a straight complete interview--though it was, in fact, done several times: each time there'd be some little thing which I'd add or change. But I hardly interfered at all. A slight editing job. The school teacher tells the whole story himself--exactly what happened from the moment they got to the house, and what they found there.

On the other hand, in that same first part, there's a scene between the postmistress and her mother when the mother reports that the ambulances have gone to the Clutter house. That's a straight dramatic scene--with quotes, dialogue, action, everything. But it evolved out of interviews just like the one with the school teacher. Except in this case I took what they had told me and transposed it into straight narrative terms. Of course, elsewhere in the book, very often it's direct observation, events I saw myself--the trial, the executions.

You never used a tape-recorder?

Twelve years ago I began to train myself, for the purpose of this sort of book, to transcribe conversation without using a tape-recorder. I did it by having a friend read passages from a book, and then later I'd write them down to see how close I could come to the original. I had a natural facility for it, but after doing these exercises for a year and a half, for a couple of hours a day, I could get within 95 percent of absolute accuracy, which is as close as you need. I felt it was essential. Even note-taking artificializes the atmosphere of an interview, or a scene-in- progress; it interferes with the communication between author and subject--the latter is usually self-conscious or an untrusting wariness is induced. Certainly, a tape-recorder does so. Not long ago, a French literary critic turned up with a tape-recorder. I don't like them, as I say, but I agreed to its use. In the middle of the interview it broke down. The French literary critic was desperately unhappy. He didn't know what to do. I said, "Well, let's just go on as if nothing had happened." He said, "It's not the same. I'm not accustomed to listen to what you're saying."

You've kept yourself out of the book entirely. Why was that--considering your own involvement in the case?

My feeling is that for the nonfiction-novel form to be entirely successful, the author should not appear in the work. Ideally. Once the narrator does appear, he has to appear throughout, all the way down the line, and the I-I-I intrudes when it really shouldn't. I think the single most difficult thing in my book, technically, was to write it without ever appearing myself, and yet, at the same time, create total credibility.

Being removed from the book, that is to say, keeping yourself out of it, do you find it difficult to present your own point of view? For example, your own view as to why Perry Smith committed the murders.

Of course it's by the selection of what you choose to tell. I believe Perry did what he did for the reasons he himself states--that his life was a constant accumulation of disillusionments and reverses and he suddenly found himself (in the Clutter house that night) in a psychological cul-de- sac. The Clutters were such a perfect set of symbols for every frustration in his life. As Perry himself said, "I didn't have anything against them, and they never did anything wrong to me--the way other people have all my life. Maybe they're just the ones who had to pay for it." Now in that particular section where Perry talks about the reason for the murders, I could have included other views. Perry's happens to be the one I believe is the right one, and it's the one that Dr. Satten at the Menninger Clinic arrived at quite independently, never having done any interviews with Perry.

I could have added a lot of other opinions. But that would have confused the issue, and indeed the book. I had to make up my mind and move toward that one view, always. You can say that the reportage is incomplete. But then it has to be. It's a question of selection, you wouldn't get anywhere if it wasn't for that. I've often thought of the book as being like something reduced to a seed. Instead of presenting the reader with a full plant, with all the foliage, a seed is planted in the soil of his mind. I've often thought of the book in that sense. I make my own comment by what I choose to tell and how I choose to tell it. It is true that an author is more in control of fictional characters because he do anything he wants with them as long as they stay credible. But in the nonfiction novel one can also manipulate: If I put something in which I don't agree about I can always set it in a context of qualification without having to step into the story myself to set the reader straight.

When did you first see the murderers--Perry and Dick?

The first time I ever saw them was the day they were returned to Garden City. I had been waiting in the crowd in the square for nearly five hours, frozen to death. That was the first time. I tried to interview them the next day--both completely unsuccessful interviews. I saw Perry first, but he was so cornered and suspicious--and quite rightly so--and paranoid that he couldn't have been less communicative. It was always easier with Dick. He was like someone you meet on a train, immensely garrulous, who starts up a conversation and is only too obliged to tell you everything. Perry much easier after the third or fourth month, but it wasn't until the last five years of his life that he was totally and absolutely honest with me, and came to trust me. I came to have great rapport with him right up through his last day. For the first year and a half, though, he would come just so close, and then no closer. He'd retreat into the forest and leave me standing outside. I'd hear him laugh in the dark. Then gradually he would come back. In the end, he could not have been more complete and candid.

How did the two accept being used as subjects for a book?

They had no idea what I was going to do. Well, of course, at the end they did. Perry was always asking me: Why are you writing this book? What is it supposed to mean? I don't understand why you're doing it. Tell me in one sentence why you want to do it. So I would say that it didn't have anything to do with changing the readers' opinion about anything, nor did I have any moral reasons worthy of calling them such--it was just that I had a strictly aesthetic theory about creating a book which could result in a work of art.

"That's really the truth, Perry," I'd tell him, and Perry would say, "A work of art, a work of art," and then he'd laugh and say, "What an irony, what an irony." I'd ask what he meant, and he'd tell me that all he ever wanted to do in his life was to produce a work of art. "That's all I ever wanted in my whole life," he said. "And now, what was happened? An incredible situation where I kill four people, and you're going to produce a work of art." Well, I'd have to agree with him. It was a pretty ironic situation.

Did you ever show sections of the book to witnesses as you went along?

I have done it, but I don't believe in it. It's a mistake because it's almost impossible to write about anybody objectively and have that person really like it. People simply do not like to see themselves put down on paper. They're like somebody who goes to see his portrait in a gallery. He doesn't like it unless it's overwhelmingly flattering--I mean the ordinary person, not someone with genuine creative perception. Showing the thing in progress usually frightens the person and there's nothing to be gained by it. I showed various sections to five people in the book, and without exception each of them found something that he desperately wanted to change. Of the whole bunch, I changed my text for one of them because, although it was a silly thing, the person genuinely believed his entire life was going to be ruined if I didn't make the change.

Did Dick and Perry see sections of the book?

They saw some sections of it. Perry wanted terribly much to see the book. I had to let him see it because it just would have been too unkind not to. Each only saw the manuscript in little pieces. Everything mailed to the prison went through the censor. I wasn't about to have my manuscript floating around between those censors--not with those Xerox machines going clickety-clack. So when I went to the prison to visit I would bring parts, some little thing for Perry to read. Perry's greatest objection was the title. He didn't like it because he said the crime wasn't committed in cold blood. I told him the title had a double meaning. What was the other meaning? he wanted to know. Well, that wasn't something I was going to tell him. Dick's reaction to the book was to start switching and changing his story. . .saying what I had written wasn't exactly true. He wasn't trying to flatter himself; he tried to change it to serve his purposes legally, to support the various appeals he was sending through the courts. He wanted the book to read as if it was a legal brief for presentation in his behalf before the Supreme Court. But you see I had a perfect control-agent--I could always tell when Dick or Perry wasn't telling the truth. During the first few months or so of interviewing them, they weren't allowed to speak to each other. So I would keep crossing their stories, and what correlated, what checked out identically, was the truth.

How did the two compare in their recounting of the events?

Dick had an absolutely fantastic memory--one of the greatest memories I have ever come across. The reason I know it's great is that I lived the entire trip the boys went on from the time of the murders up to the moment of their arrest in Las Vegas thousands of miles, what the boys called "the long ride." I went everywhere the boys had gone, all the hotel rooms, every single place in the book. Mexico, Acapulco, all of it. In the hotel in Miami Beach I stayed for three days until the manager realized why I was there and asked me to leave, which I was only too glad to do. Well, Dick could give me the names and addresses of any hotel or place along the route where they'd spent maybe just half a night. He told me when I got to Miami to take a taxi to such-and- such a place and get out on the boardwalk and it would be southwest of there, number 232, and opposite I'd find two umbrellas in the sand which advertised "Tan with Coppertone." That was how exact he was. He was the one who remembered the little card in the Mexico City hotel room in the corner of the mirror that reads "Your day ends at 2 p.m." He was extraordinary. Perry, on the other hand, was very bad at details of that sort, though he was good at remembering conversations and moods. He was concerned altogether in the overtones of things. He was much better at describing a general sort of mood or atmosphere than Dick who, though very sensitive, was impervious to that sort of thing.

What turned them back to the Clutter house after they'd almost decided to give up on the job?

Oh, Dick was always quite frank about that. I mean after it was all over. When they set out for the house that night, Dick was determined, before he ever went that if the girl, Nancy, was there he was going to rape her. It wouldn't have been an act of the moment--he had been thinking about it for weeks. He told me that was one of the main reasons he was so determined to go back after they thought, you know, for a moment, they wouldn't go. Because he'd been thinking about raping this girl for weeks and weeks. He had no idea what she looked like--after all. Floyd Wells, the man in prison who told them about the Clutters hadn't seen the girl in 10 years: it had to do with the fact that she was 15 or 16. He liked young girls much younger than Nancy Clutter actually.

What do you think would have happened if Perry had altered and not begun the killings. Do you think Dick would have done it?

No. There is such a thing as the ability to kill. Perry's particular psychosis had produced this ability. Dick was merely ambitious--he could plan the murder, but not commit it.

What was the boys' reaction to the killing?

They both finally decided that they had thoroughly enjoyed it. Once they started going, it became an immense emotional release. And they thought it was funny. With the criminal mind-- and both boys had criminal minds, believe me--what seems most extreme to us is very often, if it's the most expedient thing to do, the easiest thing for a criminal to do. Perry and Dick both used to say (a memorable phrase) that it was much easier to kill somebody than it was to cash a bad check. Passing a bad check requires a great deal of artistry and style, whereas just going in and killing somebody requires only that you pull a trigger.

There are some instances of this that aren't in the book. At one point, in Mexico, Perry and Dick had a terrific falling-out, and Perry said he was going to kill Dick. He said that he'd already killed five people--he was lying, adding one more than he should have (that was the Negro he kept telling Dick he'd killed years before in Las Vegas) and that one more murder wouldn't matter. It was simple enough. Perry's cliché about it was that if you've killed one person you can kill anybody. He'd look at Dick, as they drove along together, and he'd say to himself, Well, I really ought to kill him, it's a question of expediency.

They had two other murders planned that aren't mentioned in the book. Neither of them came off. One "victim" was a man who ran a restaurant in Mexico City--a Swiss. They had become friendly with him eating in his restaurant and when they were out of money they evolved this whole plan about robbing and murdering him. They went to his apartment in Mexico City and waited for him all night long. He never showed up. The other "victim" was a man they never even knew--like the Clutters. He was a banker in a small Kansas town. Dick kept telling Perry that sure, they might have failed with the Clutter score, but this Kansas banker job was absolutely for certain. They were going to kidnap him and ask for ransom, though the plan was, as you might imagine, to murder him right away.

When they went back to Kansas completely broke, that was the main plot they had in mind. What saved the banker was the ride the two boys took with Mr. Bell, yet another "victim" who was spared, as you remember, when he slowed down the car to pick up the Negro hitchhiker. Mr. Bell offered Dick a job in his meat-packing company. Dick took him up on it and spent two days there on the pickle line--putting pickles in ham sandwiches. I think it was before he and Perry went back on the road again.

Do you think Perry and Dick were surprised by what they were doing when they began the killings?

Perry never meant to kill the Clutters at all. He had a brain explosion. I don't think Dick was surprised, although later oh he pretended he was. He knew, even if Perry didn't, that Perry would do it, and he was right. It showed an awfully shrewd instinct on Dick's part. Perry was bothered by it to a certain extent because he'd actually done it. He was always trying to find out in his own mind why he did it. He was amazed he'd done it. Dick, on the other hand, wasn't amazed, didn't want to talk about it, and simply wanted to forget the whole thing: he wanted to get on with life.

Was there any sexual relationship, or such tendencies, between them?

No. None at all. Dick was aggressively heterosexual and had great success. Women liked him. As for Perry, his love for Willie-Jay in the State Prison was profound--and it was reciprocated, but never consummated physically, though there was the opportunity. The relationship between Perry and Dick was quite another matter. What is misleading, perhaps, is that in comparing himself with Dick, Perry used to say how totally "virile" Dick was. But he was referring, I think, to the practical and pragmatic sides of Dick--admiring them because as a dreamer he had none of that toughness himself at all.

Perry's sexual interests were practically nil. When Dick went to the whorehouses, Perry sat in the cafes, waiting. There was only one occasion--that was their first night in Mexico when the two of them went to a bordello run by an "old queen," according to Dick. Ten dollars was the price--which they weren't about to pay, and they said so. Well, the old queen looked at them and said perhaps he could arrange something for less: he disappeared and came out with this female midget about 3 feet 2 inches tall. Dick was disgusted, but Perry was madly excited. That was the only instance. Perry was such a little moralist after all.

How long do you think the two would have stayed together had they not been picked up in Las Vegas? Was the odd bond that kept them together beginning to fray? One senses in the rashness of their acts and plans a subconscious urge to be captured.

Dick planned to ditch Perry in Las Vegas, and I think he would have done so. No, I certainly don't think this particular pair wanted to be caught--though this is a common criminal phenomenon.

How do you yourself equate the sort of petty punk that Detective Alvin Dewey feels Dick is with the extraordinary violence in him--to "see hair all over the walls"?

Dick's was definitely a small-scale criminal mind. These violent phrases were simply a form of bragging meant to impress Perry, who wasimpressed, for he liked to think of Dick as being "tough." Perry was too sensitive to be "tough." Sensitive. But himself able to kill.

Is it one of the artistic limitations of the nonfiction novel that the writer is placed at the whim of chance? Suppose, in the case of "In Cold Blood," clemency had been granted? Or the two boys had been less interesting? Wouldn't the artistry of the book have suffered? Isn't luck involved?

It is true that I was in the peculiar situation of being involved in a slowly developing situation. I never knew until the events were well along whether a book was going to be possible. There was always the choice, after all, of whether to stop or go on. The book could have ended with the trial, with just a coda at the end explaining what had finally happened. If the principals had been uninteresting or completely uncooperative, I could have stopped and looked elsewhere, perhaps not very far. A nonfiction novel would have been written about any of the other prisoners in Death Row--York and Latham, or especially Lee Andrews. Andrews was the most subtly crazy person you can imagine--I mean there was just one thing wrong with him. He was the most rational, calm, bright young boy you'd ever want to meet. I mean really bright--which is what made him a truly awesome kind of person. Because his one flaw was, it didn't bother him at all to kill. Which is quite a trait. The people who crossed his path, well, to his way of thinking, the best thing to do with them was just to put them in their graves.

What other than murder might be a subject suitable for the nonfiction novel?

The other day someone suggested that the break-up of a marriage would be an interesting topic for a nonfiction novel. I disagreed. First of all, you'd have to find two people who would be willing--who'd sign a release. Second, their respective views on the subject-matter would be incoherent. And third, any couple who'd subject themselves to the scrutiny demanded would quite likely be a pair of kooks. But it's amazing how many events would work with the theory of the nonfiction novel in mind?the Watts riots, for example. They would provide a subject that satisfied the first essential of the nonfiction novel--that there is a timeless quality about the cause and events. That's important. If it's going to date, it can't be a work of art. The requisite would also be that you would have had to live through the riots, at least part of them, as a witness, so that a depth of perception could be acquired. That event, just three days. It would take years to do. You'd start with the family that instigated the riots without even meaning to.

With the nonfiction novel I suppose the temptation to fictionalize events, or a line of dialogue, for example, must at times be overwhelming. With "In Cold Blood" was there any invention of this sort to speak of--I was thinking specifically of the dog you described trotting along the road at the end of the section on Perry and Dick, and then later you introduce the next section on the two with Dick swerving to hit the dog. Was there actually a dog at that exact point in the narrative, or were you using this habit of Dick's as a fiction device to bridge the two sections?

No. There was a dog, and it was precisely as described. One doesn't spend almost six years on a book, the point of which is factual accuracy, and then give way to minor distortions. People are so suspicious. They ask, "How can you reconstruct the conversation of a dead girl, Nancy Clutter, without fictionalizing?" If they read the book carefully, they can see readily enough how it's done. It's a silly question. Each time Nancy appears in the narrative, there are witnesses to what she is saying and doing--phone calls, conversations, being overheard. When she walks the horse up from the river in the twilight, the hired man is a witness and talked to her then. The last time we see her, in her bedroom, Perry and Dick themselves were the witnesses, and told me what she had said. What is reported of her, even in the narrative form, is as accurate as many hours of questioning, over and over again, can make it. All of it is reconstructed from the evidence of witnesses which is implicit in the title of the first section of the book "The Last to See Them Alive."

How conscious were you of film techniques in planning the book?

Consciously, not at all. Subconsciously, who knows?

After their conviction, you spent years corresponding and visiting with the prisoners. What was the relationship between the two of them?

When they were taken to Death Row, they were right next door to each other. But they didn't talk much. Perry was intensely secretive and wouldn't ever talk because he didn't want the other prisoners--York, Latham, and particularly Andrews, whom he despised to hear anything that he had to say. He would write Dick notes on "kites" as he called them. He would reach out his hand and zip the "kite" into Dick's cell. Dick didn't much enjoy receiving these communications because they were always one form or another of recrimination--nothing to do with the Clutter crime, but just general dissatisfaction with things there in prison and. . .the people, very often Dick himself. Perry'd send Dick a note: "If I hear you tell another of those filthy jokes again I'll kill you when we go to the shower!" He was quite a little moralist, Perry, as I've said.

It was over a moral question that he and I had a tremendous falling-out once. It lasted for about two months. I used to send them things to read--both books and magazines. Dick only wanted girlie magazines--either those or magazines that had to do with cars and motors. I sent them both whatever they wanted. Well, Perry said to me one time: "How could a person like you go on contributing to the degeneracy of Dick's mind by sending him all this degenerate filthy literature?" Weren't they all sick enough without this further contribution towards their total moral decay? He'd got very grand talking in terms that way. I tried to explain to him that I was neither his judge nor Dick's--and if this was what Dick wanted to read, that was his business. Perry felt that was entirely wrong--that people had to fulfill an obligation towards moral leadership. Very grand. Well, I agree with him up to a point, but in the case of Dick's reading matter it was absurd, of course, and so we got into such a really serious argument about it that afterwards, for two months, he wouldn't speak or even write to me.

How often did the two correspond with you?

Except for those occasional fallings-out, they'd write twice a week. I wrote them both twice a week all those years. One letter to the both of them didn't work. I had to write them both, and I had to be careful not to be repetitious, because they were very jealous of each other. Or rather, Perry was terribly jealous of Dick, and if Dick got one more letter than he did, that would create a great crisis. I wrote them about what I was doing, and where I was living, describing everything in the most careful detail. Perry was interested in my dog, and I would always write about him, and send along pictures. I often wrote them about their legal problems.

Do you think if the social positions of the two boys had been different that their personalities would have been markedly different?

Of course, there wasn't anything peculiar about Dick's social position. He was a very ordinary boy who simply couldn't sustain any kind of normal relationship with anybody. If he had been given $10,000, perhaps he might have settled into some small business. But I don't think so. He had a very natural criminal instinct towards everything. He was oriented towards stealing from the beginning. On the other hand, I think Perry could have been an entirely different person. I really do. His life had been so incredibly abysmal that I don't see what chance he had as a little child except to steal and run wild.

Of course, you could say that his brother, with exactly the same background, went ahead and became the head of his class. What does it matter that he later killed himself. No, it's there--it's the fact that the brother did kill himself, in spite of his success, that shows how really awry the background of the Smiths' lives were. Terrifying. Perry had extraordinary qualities, but they just weren't channeled properly to put it mildly. He was a really a talented boy in a limited way--he had genuine sensitivity--and, as I've said, when he talked about himself as an artist, he wasn't really joking at all.

You once said that emotionality made you lose writing control--that you had to exhaust emotion before you could get to work. Was there a problem with "In Cold Blood," considering your involvement with the case and its principals?

Yes, it was a problem. Nevertheless, I felt in control throughout. However, I had great difficulty writing the last six or seven pages. This even took a physical form: hand paralysis. I finally used a typewriter--very awkward as I always write in longhand.

Your feeling about capital punishment is implicit in the title of the book. How do you feel the lot of Perry and Dick should have been resolved?

I feel that capital crimes should all be handled by Federal Courts, and that those convicted should be imprisoned in a special Federal prison where, conceivably, a life-sentence could mean, as it does not in state courts, just that.

Did you see the prisoners on their final day? Perry wrote you a 100-page letter that you received after the execution. Did he mention that he had written it?

Yes, I was with them the last hour before execution. No, Perry did not mention the letter. He only kissed me on the cheek, and said, "Adios, amigo."

What was the letter about?

It was a rambling letter, often intensely personal, often setting forth his various philosophies. He had been reading Santayana. Somewhere he had read "The Last Puritan," and had been very impressed by it. What I really think impressed him about me was that I had once visited Santayana at the Convent of the Blue Nuns in Rome. He always wanted me to go into great detail about that visit, Santayana had looked like, and the nuns, and all the physical details. Also, he had been reading Thoreau. Narratives didn't interest him at all. So in his letter he would write: "As Santayana says"--and then there'd be five pages of Santayana did say. Or he'd write: "I agree with Thoreau about this. Do you?"--then he'd write that he didn't care what I thought, and he'd add five or ten pages of what he agreed with Thoreau about.

The case must have left you with an extraordinary collection of memorabilia.

My files would almost fill a whole small room, right up to the ceiling. All my research. Hundreds of letters. Newspaper clippings. Court records--the court records almost fill two trunks. There were so many Federal hearings on the case. One Federal hearing was twice as long as the original court trial. A huge assemblage of stuff. I have some of the personal belongings--all of Perry's because he left me everything he owned; it was miserably little, his books, written in and annotated; the letters he received while in prison. . .not very many. . .his paintings and drawings. Rather a heartbreaking assemblage that arrived about a month after the execution. I simply couldn't bear to look at it for a long time. I finally sorted everything. Then, also, after the execution, that 100-age letter from Perry got to me. The last line of the letter--it's Thoreau, I think, a paraphrase, goes "And suddenly I realize life is the father and death is the mother." The last line. Extraordinary.

What will you do with this collection?

I think I may burn it all. You think I'm kidding? I'm not. The book is what is important. It exists in its own right. The rest of the material is extraneous, and it's personal. What's more, I don't really want people poking around in the material of six years of work and research. The book is the end result of all that, and it's exactly what I wanted to do from it.

Detective Dewey told me that he felt the case and your stays in Garden City had changed you--even your style of dress. . .that you were more "conservative" now, and had given up detachable collars. . .

Of course the case changed me! How could anyone live through such an experience without it profoundly affecting him? I've always been almost overly aware of the precipice we all walk along, the ridge and the abyss on either side; the last six years have increased this awareness to an almost all-pervading point. As for the rest--Mr. Dewey, a man for whom I have the utmost affection and respect, is perhaps confusing comparative youth (I was 35 when we first met) with the normal aging process. Six years ago I had four more teeth and considerably more hair than is now the case, and furthermore, I lost 20 pounds. I dress to accommodate the physical situation. By the way, I have never worn a detachable collar.

What are you going to work on now?

Well, having talked at such length about the nonfiction novel, I must admit I'm going to write a novel, a straight novel, one I've had in mind for about 15 years. But I will attempt the nonfiction form again--when the time comes and the subject appears and I recognize the possibilities. I have one very good idea for another one, but I'm going to let it simmer on the back of my head for awhile. It's quite a step--to undertake the nonfiction novel. Because the amount of work is enormous. The relationship between the author and all the people he must deal with if he does the job properly--well, it's a full 24-hour-a-day job. Even when I wasn't working on the book, I was somehow involved with all the characters in it with their personal lives, writing six or seven letters a day, taken up with their problems, a complete involvement. It's extraordinarily difficult and consuming, but for a writer who tries, doing it all the way down the line, the result can be a unique and exciting form of writing.

What has been the response of readers of "In Cold Blood" to date?

I've been staggered by the letters I've received, their quality of sensibility, their articulateness, the compassion of their authors. The letters are not fan letters. They're from people deeply concerned about what it is I've written about. About 70 percent of the letters think of the book as a reflection on American life, this collision between the desperate, ruthless, wandering, savage part of American life, and the other, which is insular and safe, more or less. It has struck them because there is something so awfully inevitable about what is going to happen: the people in the book are completely beyond their own control. For example, Perry wasn't an evil person. If he'd had any chance in life, things would have been different. But every illusion he'd ever had, well, they all evaporated, so that on that night he was so full of self-hatred and self-pity that I think he would have killedsomebody--perhaps not that night, or the next, or the next. You can't go through life without ever getting anything you want, ever.

At the very end of the book you give Alvin Dewey a scene in the country cemetery, a chance meeting with Sue Kidwell, which seems to synthesize the whole experience for him. Is there such a moment in your own case?

I'm still very much haunted by the whole thing. I have finished the book, but in a sense I haven't finished it: it keeps churning around in my head. It particularizes itself now and then, but not in the sense that it brings about a total conclusion. It's like the echo of E.M. Forster's Malabar Caves, the echo that's meaningless and yet it's there: one keeps hearing it all the time.

Mr. Plimpton is editor of The Paris Review, which has made a specialty of the long, tape- recorded literary review.

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27 Writing Lessons & Hacks From Some of the Best Writers on the Planet

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The amount of bad writing advice out there is astounding. People who have never published anything selling courses on how to make a career as a writer. Terribly written Medium articles telling you how to improve your prose. Marketing books from writers who not only haven’t sold many books—but their own marketing books don’t sell. All this bad advice adds up and makes a harder thing—an already difficult industry to navigate—even harder.

Over the last year, I’ve been lucky enough to interview some of the best writers on the planet for WritingRoutines.com. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to be able to ask Pulitzer Prize winners, #1 New York Times best-selling authors, brilliant novelists, talented journalists and expert communicators about how they practice their craft. I got valuable lessons from each one. I’ve collected a few of the best below, alongside some of the insights—or hacks as we call them today to get more people to click—from writers I wish were still alive to interview or ones I wish to interview someday if the opportunity presents itself.

I hope you learn as much from them as I did. Enjoy!

***

Devote Yourself to Someone Greater First

“If I am asked today to advise a young writer who has not yet made up his mind what way to go, I would try to persuade him to devote himself first to the work of someone greater, interpreting or translating him. If you are a beginner there is more security in such self-sacrifice than in your own creativity and nothing you ever do with all your heart is done in vain.”

— Stefan Zweig, author of The World of Yesterday and in the 1920’s and 1930’s was one of the most popular authors in the world

Wake Up Early And Read, Read, Read

“I wake up around 5am. I have 2-3 cups of coffee. I read and read and read for two hours. I read high quality literary fiction to be inspired, high quality non-fiction about a topic I am fascinated by in order to learn, I read inspirational or spiritual writing to feel that special something inside, and often I will spend some  time studying a game. Then I might read the literary fiction some more. At some point, I get the urge or the itch to put the books away. I go to my computer and start to write.”

—  James Altucher, author of Choose Yourself!, which the USA Today’s called one of “Best Business Books of All Time.”

Do Not Chase Exotic Locations to Write

“It was a time everyone was pressing wonderful houses on us. ‘I have a perfectly marvellous house for you to write in,’ they’d say. Of course no one needs marvellous houses to write in. I still knew that much. All you needed was one room. But somehow the next house always beckoned.”

— Budd Schulberg, author of What Makes Sammy Run? and the Academy Award-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront

Edit Ten Times

“I repeatedly edit it many times, at least ten. I just keep on doing it, until I can’t think of further improvements. I can’t say that is a process in any formal sense, simply a recognition that the “process” to date hasn’t worked very well and so it must continue. I don’t pretend this is efficient.”

— Tyler Cowen, economics professor, author of Average Is Over and contributor to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and many other publications

Nobody Gets Talker’s Block

“No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.”

— Seth Godin, New York Times bestselling author of Purple Cow and more than 20 other books

Do the Three Passes of Editing

“[My editing] rests on three passes. The first pass is when you write the best chapter you can. The second pass comes later once the whole book (or whole part of the book containing the chapter) is done. During this pass, I come back to the chapter on my computer and cut and tighten. The final pass is when I read through a printed version of the chapter on paper. Reading on paper is necessary if you’re going to root out odd constructions or minor errors.”

— Cal Newport, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Deep Work

The Only Way Out is Through

“The way out of this mess is through. A friend of mine who used to do long-distance running gave me some advice on dealing with pain as a writer. “What do you do about the cramps?” I asked. I was noticing they hit my in the gut usually at the three or four mile mark. I thought he’d have some great advice on how to avoid them altogether. In fact, I assumed this was the case. His answer surprised me, though. ‘Cramps? What do I do? I keep running, and eventually they go away. I run through the cramps.’ What do I do when I feel blocked? I write through the block.”  

— Jeff Goins, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Real Artists Don’t Starve

Sometimes You Just Need Some Good Earmuffs

“I’m an “absolute quiet” kind of person. If I’m writing at home, and there’s any noise at all, such as my wonderful hubby puttering around and coincidentally clearing his throat, I wear my Peltor Sport Ultimate 10 Hearing Protector Earmuffs. I’m so used to them that when I need to concentrate, I put them on even when there isn’t any noise. Earmuffs are like a signal to my brain—Okay, focus! On planes, I often wear noise canceling headphones.”  

— Dr. Barbara Oakley, bestselling author of A Mind for Numbers and former Army Captain

Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You

“What they want to hear is, ‘Here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script’…but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’”

— Steve Martin, author of Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life and award-winning actor and banjo player

Keep the Best in Mind

“It really depends on the genre of work I’m doing–I always try to keep models in mind, though the model will change depending on what I’m working on. For the book on Cato the Younger, Jimmy Soni and I were constantly referring to Tom Holland’s book on the Roman Republic, Rubicon; for our book on Claude Shannon, to James Gleick’s The Information and Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind. For my academic work, people like Danielle Allen are great models.”

— Rob Goodman, congressional speechwriter and co-author of A Mind at Play and Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar

Quit Your Bitching

“Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.”

― Cheryl Strayed, author of the number #1 New York Times bestseller Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things

Fix The Important Things

“Writer’s block is miserable and part of it can be just being in a really bad place. Sometimes if you’re just in a bad mental place, it doesn’t matter what work you put in. You have to fix bigger things than your writing.”

— Hari Kondabolu, the comic who the New York Times called “one of the most necessary political comedians working today.”

Get a Giant Sketchpad

“Notebooks have always been big for me, both in the early stages of a new project and as a way to get myself unstuck if I’m struggling. But I have giant, chicken-scratch handwriting, and would always end up jotting down thoughts over half a dozen pages and then never really looking at them again. I have probably fifty illegible notebooks sitting in desk drawers, and I would easily have filled fifty more had I not been introduced to the most elegant solution by a friend, the author Ashley Cardiff: A sketchpad. A 9-by-12-inch artist’s sketchpad. This has been my great revelation. It’s unlined so I can read my bad handwriting and large enough that I can group several ideas together on the same page. Plus, it gives me an excuse to buy fancy mechanical pencils.”

— Liana Maeby, author of South on Highland, which actor/writer BJ Novak called “the kind of book kids will steal from each other.”

It’s All Material

“I’m never not working on material. Every second of my existence, I am thinking, ‘Can I do something with that?’” [By the way, this advice echoes a phrase I’ve learned from author Robert Greene, “It’s all material.” Meaning everything bad that happens, everything frustrating or delayed or disappointing—all of it can be fuel for a book. It can teach you something that helps you improve your business, it can become a story you pass along to a friend.]

— Jerry Seinfeld, creator of Seinfeld and named by Comedy Central the “12th Greatest Stand-up Comedian of All Time.”

Understand How the Pieces Fit Together

“To write a clean and fluent piece of any kind, you have to understand how its various parts fit together—how a change here will affect something over there. With a short piece, you never lose sight of the whole because you can read and reread it many times as you work. That’s what I do. I make a change and then I read the whole piece to see how it works. But I can’t do that with a book, so I have to find other ways to stay oriented. I reread or skim sections of the book that I know relate to the part I’m working on, I keep notes about the larger structure, and I use Word’s phrase-search function to move around and check up on things. I also make a huge effort to commit as much of the book as I can to memory. It’s exhausting and it seems psychologically damaging in some way, but it helps me to understand when jokes need to be repeated, how much space needs to intervene between similar kinds of scenes, how ideas should be patterned, etc.”

— Aaron Thier, author of Mr. Eternity and recipient of a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts

Run to Keep Yourself Sane

“The twin activities of running and writing keep the writer reasonably sane and with the hope, however illusory and temporary, of control.” [This is not unlike many other writers—including Murakami and Malcolm Gladwell—who use running as a coping mechanism.]

— Joyce Carol Oates, author of over 40 novels, including Them, winner of the National Book Award  

Before You Write, Crystallize Your Thinking

“If I’m just starting, I never consider the page blank. I’ve been writing in my head long before I sit down at the keyboard. In fact, I sometimes start inadvertently, by describing to someone what I’m doing. Conversation often crystallizes my own thinking far more effectively than solitary reflection. When I put the first words down, I know they’re likely to change, which I find liberating—no need to get it perfect the first time. But I want the first sentence to set a tone or indicate a theme for that chapter, so I have to start with a clear sense of the meaning of the events that follow, and how I want the reader to feel.”

— Pulitzer Prize winner T.J. Stiles, author of Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

Let the Play Accumulate

“Don’t start writing the play at once, but get a little notebook and put down everything you think about your play in the notebook, just as the ideas come to you without rhyme or reason especially. Let the play accumulate, as I call it; let it percolate and stew in your mind; and write down any ideas, bits of dialogue, descriptions, words—anything you think you might be able to use. Many of these things will come to you unconsciously while you are walking home from school, bathing, mowing the lawn; be sure to get them all into your notebook.”

— E.P. Conkle, professor emeritus of drama whose plays have been produced on Broadway

Take the Necessary Medicine

“I tend to edit heavily and repeatedly as I go along, so I don’t make the distinction, at least by myself. For the books that I’ve written for a larger public, however, I’ve had the help of an immensely gifted editor (Alane Mason, at Norton), so there I do separate out the tasks: in effect my own writing/editing; and then a further editing after receiving her suggestions. I tend to hate the latter experience, though I recognize that it is almost invariably good—a bit like swallowing disagreeable but essential medicine.”

— Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve, a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award winner

To Beat Writer’s Block, Double Down on Research

“When I have writer’s block it is because I have not done enough research or I have not thought hard enough about the subject about which I’m writing. That’s a signal for me to go back to the archives or to go back into my thoughts and think through what it is I am supposed to be doing.”

— MacArthur “Genius” and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

Always Ask These Questions

“What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?” Then finish with these final two questions: ‘Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?’”

— George Orwell, famous author of 1984 and Animal Farm

You Don’t Need a Vomit Draft

“Writers are usually encouraged to write a “vomit draft” and just get something out, however terrible it is, in order to overcome The Fear, get some momentum, and move to more of an editing mindset, where’s it’s less scary to make progress. I don’t do that. I think that’s just a trick to try and lower the stakes so you can overcome procrastination and The Fear. And while it’s good for that, I think it’s bad in the long haul because you’re producing a lot of junk and that’s going to be hard to fully clean up. I treat writing a lot more like architecture. You wouldn’t work without a blueprint, construct a crappy building, then knock it down and build a better one. That would be ridiculous. You’d put together a really tight blueprint, then construct the building once, the right way, and if it needs tweaks, they’re relatively small. As the old saying goes: ‘Measure twice, cut once.’”

— Eric Barker, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Barking Up The Wrong Tree and creator of the popular blog of the same name

Keep the Momentum

“Never stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether.”

—Jeanette Winterson, a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award and author best known for Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which was adapted into a BBC drama

You Don’t Need to be Kissed by a Muse

When asked if writing comes easy: “Haha, no, I’ve not been kissed by a muse. For me, writing is a craft that needs constant honing.”

— Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, which won the Royal Society Science Book Award 2016 and the LA Times Book Prize 2016.

Write for the Ear

“I’ve got a theory that most writers are either frustrated musicians or painters – and which of them you are depends on whether you write for the ear or the eye.  As a former musician and former speechwriter, I definitely write for the ear. I listen to music all the time for inspiration and energy. I tend to make playlists as the sound track for writing different books.  They serve as snapshots in time.  So, I’ve got one for Wingnuts – lots of The National, Drive-By-Truckers, Radiohead and Randy Newman – and one for Washington’s Farewell that’s more classical, jazz, the Americana series by Chris Thile, Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer and the soundtrack to Hamilton.”

— John Avlon, author of Washington’s Farewell and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast

Learn How to Take Brutally Frank Criticism

“I try to imagine comments, questions, and criticisms that the book will generate. Then I try to rehearse the reply or answer. My friends are great critics of my writing and I always make sure they have read the drafts and galleys and been brutally frank with me about their reactions. They know I can take it.”

— Richard Clarke, former Assistant Secretary of State who has served under three different Presidents in different roles and author of Warnings: Finding Cassandras To Stop Catastrophes

Wake Up and Get After It

“I remember Salman Rushdie telling me how he gives it the first energy of the day. As soon as he gets up, he goes to his office and starts writing. He’s still in his pajamas. He believes there is a “little package of creative energy that was nourished by sleep,” and he doesn’t want to waste it. He works for an hour or two and then goes to brush his teeth. I have a very similar approach. Only I brush my teeth before I start. I guess that’s my pre-writing ritual.”

— Cal Fussman, best known for the “What I’ve Learned” Esquire column and a master interviewer who has talked to the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Muhammad Ali, John Wooden, Richard Branson

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