Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

  Ever have those days when you’re muzzy and unmotivated?  You know how it is. Sometimes you're aware you should write, but you don't feel like it. And even if you did, you're plagued by not knowing what to write about. Or maybe you have an important scene or an article to write and you can't find the necessary impetus to get you started. Worse, you just can't be bothered to write at all - it's too hard to even contemplate. What do you do when this happens to you? If you write for a living, this can be especially troubling.   After all, if you're not writing, you're not working. So, you feel bad because you know that not writing equals no money coming in, now or in the future... What's the solution? First of all you need to get your head around what I call 'The Big Secret.' And the big secret is that career writers don't need a reason to write. They don't need inspiration or a good idea. They don't even need

  It's so easy to feel negative. The media is always telling us we're on the brink of economic collapse - that it's only a matter of days before the biggest slump since the 1930s Depression takes away the value of our property, our savings and our livelihoods. Many would-be writers are tightening their belts, ignoring the call to write in favor of the day job. They're giving up their dreams in droves, convinced that it's all too hard... Uh, did I miss something? Doesn't anyone remember basic economics from school? I thought it was well known that economic activity goes in seven year cycles - apparently something to do with the sun - and that boom and bust years are natural and inevitable. Smart stock market people know there's never a bad time for investors - there's just alternate opportunities. While some stocks slide, others climb. When the market is overpriced, it adjusts itself by devaluing. When stocks and interest rates

  Writers are a stubborn lot. Sometimes it can take us decades to learn a subtle truth about writing that forever changes us - and our writing - for the better. At various stages in my writing career, more experienced writers and critics have said (in no particular order) "watch your point of view switches," "careful not to use the author's voice," "learn format and punctuation assiduously," "don't over justify your concepts," "don't overuse adjectives or qualifiers," "dump cliche and adverbs," "be totally honest in your writing," "know your characters inside out," "make your motivations believable," "write for the reader," etc., etc. Each time I felt an inner resistance and fallen back on the age-old feeling of "I know what I'm doing - that's my style." Only to realize, sometimes years later, that my peers and critics were right - and that I should have l

  I bought some software last night to help constructing stories. In the help file I found a useful note on the four questions we need to ask ourselves about a story before we start writing. These questions help clarify our idea and also let us know whether we have a story that is compelling enough to start work on. Many ideas falter at this stage - which can useful because doubt can alert you to the weaknesses in an idea and to stop you from pursuing a story that may lose impetus half way through. We all know there's nothing worse than starting a story, then running out of steam when it seems to go nowhere or end up in a hole. Getting stuck during the writing of a story is no fun at all! However, answering the following questions can also help you solidify an idea into a story worth telling. Question One: Who is your main character? Often we may be tempted to think that it's a combination of characters that make a story interesting. True - but usually not from the

In a few of my articles recently I have suggested that the path of the modern writer may not always lead down the traditional walkways of novel writing, journalism or indeed any of the more familiar routes a writer might want to take. There are new opportunities of all kinds. The Net, for one, with its need for constant content and marketing material. Offline too there are a myriad of writing jobs - many of which I explore in my Easy Cash Writing course. For the committed writer there are always new and varied avenues to pursue. In the spirit of which, we ventured into the world of TV yesterday, when we visited an executive from a certain funding body to pitch some ideas we'd had for TV shows. I won't mention our contact's name, not because it's a secret or because we're being coy, but because these people don't like it when you bandy their names around (especially not in a public forum like a blog). The last thing a TV exec wants is to be seen to be

Gustave Flaubert apparently took five years to write his exceptionally awesome novel Madame Bovary. Not a bad feat considering, over 175 years after it's completion, the book is still regarded as one of the most 'perfect' novels ever written.  Flaubert was famous for wanting to find just the right word - le mot juste   in French. Sometimes, he would apparently spend a whole week in solitude, agonizing  over one single page until he considered it as faultless as he could  manage. In contrast, Sylvester Stallone took a mere two weeks over writing the first Rocky movie - and said of Flaubert's precise writing style, "What was that all about?" What indeed, Sly. Of course the times have changed. In 1856, Madame Bovary was at first considered immoral. Its protagonist has the kind of romantic liaisons that are now, to modern Sex and the City   girls, considered totally normal. Even so, the story still has the power to  shock the middle class sensibilities it was