Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

Rob Parnell Does anyone actually read articles anymore? I'm not sure. I know from my own experience that when I'm surfing the Net, I generally don't sit and read articles all the way through. For most of us the purpose of surfing is get information quickly. And reading off a screen can be tiring. So we tend to skim. Surfing is actually a good word for it. We rarely dive in and explore the sea of information available. We ride the surface of it, soaking in the spray, barely getting our feet wet... Okay, enough of this metaphor! Scientists have proven that we don't actually read words anyway. What we do is recognize phrases - collections of words - that create mental images in our minds. It's those images that we use to absorb the information we need. Not the words at all. Hence the need for quick bites of info - the way news is reported nowadays, in pulses designed to hook us, but rarely do. Mainly because those pulses are so effective, we don't feel the need to ...

Rob Parnell I can't remember who said it but a writer once pointed out that nobody will ever miss something you didn't write. People don't walk around wishing they can find the genius they are unaware of, or the book that hasn't been written yet. It's the harshest reality a writer must face. That nobody really cares whether you finish your novel or magnum opus - or whether you even work on it at all. A book is nothing until it's published - and even then, given current trends, it's unlikely to set the world on fire or sell more than a few copies. Writers must find their own reasons to write - and be self motivated enough to continue without anything but selfish reasons to finish what they start. As Dorothea Brande said in "Becoming a Writer", writers create their own emergencies. They have to, because nobody else really gives a damn. It's funny. I was rereading a little of Stephen King's "On Writing" this week and I noticed someth...

Rob Parnell When writing fiction, writers are forced to consider the protagonist and his or her agenda. We need to ask what our hero's goals are and where they want to end up as people. Now usually, there is an antagonist whose desire to thwart the hero's goals is at least as strong, if not stronger than the hero's. But what about writers themselves? Who is their main antagonist? Alas - usually themselves. When it comes to writing, there's that little guy inside your head who wants to criticize - endlessly. His voice reminds you constantly that you have no special talent, that your writing is average at best, and that you should never, ever show your work to anyone because, well, it's crap. Helpful little fella. And to think, he lives inside of us! Suppressing the inner critic is a necessary part of the writing process. If we couldn't silence the little rascal, we'd never write anything. Indeed many writers get stuck on page one because they can't ignore...