"" Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog: October 2017

Thursday, October 19, 2017

The Art of Focus


More than half the battle when you're trying to write is remaining focused enough to complete a project.

It used to be that most writers complained about lack of time to finish their novels, even their short stories, and articles.

Life has always had a way of distracting us from our goals - and that was before the Internet.

Yes, there was such a time.

It reminds me of that old joke. "How did we ever look busy at work before computers?"

Now it's like, "How did we ever fill our time before the Net?"

A hundred years ago – in the evenings before TV - we sat in candlelight, singing songs around a piano. Or we got pissed on gin in a tavern.

Then came TV and we sat around watching black and white drama and variety shows on the BBC, who (my mum says) told you when to go to bed when they stopped broadcasting.

Now it's all gone crazy.

24/7 entertainment by the yard, distractions by the bucket load, total information overload - how is a writer supposed to think, let alone write!

And none of this includes dealing with our jobs, the shopping, the chores, our families and having real off-line friends to socialize with.

In Japan, they sell clean air - because it's such a rare commodity.

I reckon the person who can package and sell FOCUS will be the next billionaire.

We recently upgraded our broadband - from crap to vaguely acceptable - because these are the only two options Australia offers its customers.

Now, everything electronic in our house is permanently connected, not only to the Net but to each other. Things ding and ping randomly and we have designated charging points for all our mobile clutter. 

It's all great and wonderful - until I need to write!

The afternoon has recently become my "technology free" zone. It's hard - actually really hard - but I switch off my connection so I'm free to write articles, blogs and sometimes, my fiction.

It's absurd that I often have to go offline to answer emails - otherwise, they'd never get done!

And if I find it tough, what about those people who tweet every hour of every day? How do they find the time to do anything else?

Maybe they don't.

I guess that's it - tweeting IS what they do - maybe in between their novels?

I don't know.

It's hard not to be online, isn't it?

Just a quick peek that turns into an hour or two?

I've started editing manuscripts in bed - on my tablet - which of course is only a screen-flip away from the entire web. It's a wonder we get anything done these days...

And yet there are still thousands of authors out there who do get things done!

My hat is off to them.

Personally, I will continue to try and find that elusive balance.

I call myself a writer - because that's what I do (mostly). I would hate to get so distracted I lose sight of that imperative.

Which does happen sometimes - and I loathe myself for being so unproductive...

I hope you too find your balance, with the help of The Writing Academy.

And that we continually remind ourselves to FOCUS when necessary.

The best to you,

Keep Writing!

Thursday, October 12, 2017

7 Ways to Kickstart Your Mind


New writers often ask me what they should write about.

How do you get ideas? they ask. I know I want to write but I can't think of anything interesting enough to fire my imagination.

To be honest, I think that coming up with ideas is a largely a learned skill that gets easier with practice. Writing regularly has a way of triggering the mind into coming up with ideas, almost as a byproduct of the writing process.

But if you're stuck, how do you re-ignite your little gray cells? Here are seven strategies that may help you.

1. Read Outside Your Comfort Zone

Don't read whole books, be a browser. Pick up books and magazines you would never normally touch and read things at random.

Go to Amazon and download lots of free samples on science, anthropology, astronomy, history, eclectic stuff you wouldn't normally expose yourself to. Let your mind read enough to be puzzled, intrigued or fascinated, then stop and move on.

This process will help fire different neurons in your brain - the first step to lateral imagining.

2. Stop Thinking

A great way to fall asleep is to force yourself to stay awake. A fabulous way to gain weight is to go on a diet. Put your brain on a diet.

For ten minutes, try to think about absolutely nothing. Force every single thought out of your mind. Push them away. Try to get to a still point of silence in your brain.

When you stop the inane chatter in your mind and force it to understand that nothing is important, you open up more creative pathways for your left brain to explore.

3. Brainstorm like a Child

We're born with fertile imaginations because every new input is strange and needs understanding. Everything needs analysis when you're a kid.

Recapture that youthful playfulness by asking why? of everything, just like kids do. Don't accept the answer your mind automatically gives you. Think harder. Imagine different explanations.

Good writers do this all the time. They learn not to accept the failsafe answer but to keep questioning. Just asking the questions make your brain more active and healthy.

4. Rip It Up

Go to a yard sale and buy up an old dictionary, a Yellow Pages and another fat book, maybe a bible. Tear out all the pages, tear the pages into pieces and stuff all the scraps into a plastic bag.

Then make it habit to pull out three or four pieces of paper and try to see connections between the words and names and events in your grubby little hands.

Making connections between random words has a name: it's called inspiration!

5. What If - With Scapple

The wonderful people who made Scrivener have produced a mind-mapping software called Scapple. With just a little work, you can create words and bubbles and links to your heart's content.

Type in a word and ask 'what if' questions to yourself. What if my mailman was a frog? What if the sky was green? That kind of thing. Put your answers into Scapple and link them back and forth.

You can get a free copy of Scapple here: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple.php

You can also get a free copy of Scrivener here:
http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

The two programs are compatible - and if Scrivener doesn't get your imagination firing, you're probably not a writer!


6. Play Dice

Write down six names for imaginary characters. Number them one to six.

Throw a dice and pick the name that matches the number you just threw. Then write down six places, numbering them. Throw the dice, picking the numbered place you threw.

Now you have Patrick from Cincinnati for instance. Then write down six character attributes or plot ideas. Keep throwing the dice to choose between six options.

Let your mind do the rest. It's forcing your mind to make new connections that will jump-start your imagination.


7. Make Lists

You may not believe it yet but your mind is teeming with ideas. We have around 80,000 thoughts a day but less than 2,600 actually impinge on our consciousness. Of those, around 90% were the same thoughts we had yesterday.

The way to come up with new ideas is to force your thoughts down new pathways.

Making lists is a great way of opening up your neural networks.

List ten names of characters. List ten ways to cook an egg. List ten ways to climb a hill. Push yourself. Don't settle for less than ten.

List ten obstacles to getting your perfect mate. List ten ways a criminal might rob a bank. List ten ways a warrior might kill a dragon.

You can immediately see that by a slight shift in your thinking process, you're already coming up with story ideas.

This is the secret to coming up with ideas- and now you know it!
Keep Writing!

Thursday, October 5, 2017

The Bestselling Books of All Time


The biggest selling book of all time is, of course, The Bible

Given its place and significance in our cultural history, that’s probably not surprising. But, strictly speaking, the Bible doesn't count - for our purposes - because it's allegedly not fiction (though some might disagree.)
I want to restrict my study of the bestseller to fiction - because to me, any book about things and people that aren't obviously real would have to pretty powerful to inspire millions of people to buy it.

Okay. 

Would it surprise you then to discover that the bestselling novel, ever, is, in fact, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities? 

Shocked the hell out of me. Yep, we've consumed over 200 million copies of this saga about the French Revolution and its effect on English mores.

After that, we're on more familiar ground with The Lord of the Rings at around 150 million - and this figure isn't skewed by the book often being sold as three books - they're still only counted as one. 

The redoubtable Agatha Christie comes in third with And Then There Were None, which in pre correct times was called Ten Little Niggers and later Ten Little Indian Boys - a cracking good read with a brilliant twist, written in 1939.

Here we get the glimmerings of one of my first conclusions about writing bestsellers. That, from the first three entries, what is clear is that so-called 'literary' writing is not what counts. It's emphatically the story that is more important. 

This is especially apparent when we look at number five in the list.

By the way, The Hobbit is at number four - but clearly, Tolkien had the advantage of writing the number two bestseller.

The fifth bestselling novel of all time is, in fact, She by Rider Haggard.

What? I hear you gasp.

Again here we see another indication that story is king.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince weighs in next, for reasons not immediately obvious. I mean, it's a cute story about kingship and aliens but 80 million copies? Must have been a slow news year.

Next, at number seven, we're at least not so flummoxed by the news that The Da Vinci Code has earned its place in the top ten bestsellers of all time.

I can already hear that rumbling out there. You're wondering about young Harry, aren't you? Patience, please.

Number eight reveals our twentieth-century obsession with all things warped with Catcher in the Rye - the book that arguably spawned a jailyard of psychopaths - and to this day is a story I find impenetrable.

Whenever I try to read it, I'm struck by the thought that it really must be about something, though I'm not quite sure what. Maybe that's its vague adolescent appeal. I prefer the more familiar ground trodden in Camus' The Outsider.

Number Nine - and one my favorites: The Alchemist by Portuguese visionary Paulo Coelho. At least here a profound message is disguised as a great piece of deceptively simple writing.

And what about number ten?

Don't hold your breath, you'll be disappointed to learn - perhaps even disgruntled to know - that Heidi's Years of Wandering and Learning by the less than familiar Johanna Spyri takes that coveted spot.

Well, knock me down with a fevver, as they say in London.

So, I can feel that tug on my arm again...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes in at number seventeen, believe it or not - after such evergreen classics as Anne of Green Gables, Black Beauty, The Name of the Rose, Charlotte's Web and the other Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

I think what's interesting about these bestsellers is that they're probably not the books you were expecting to see. At all.

I mean, where is the like of Twilight, 50 Shades, Catch 22, The Godfather or even Jaws, The Exorcist, 1984, or Jurassic Park?

Top ten movie lists tend to feature the most recent films simply because more people exist to go and see movies nowadays - and gross numbers are what count.

But this is not the case with novels.

Each new generation finds entertainment in well-worn classics - but surely that doesn't explain why so many classics aren't featured in the bestselling novels list.

Of course, most so-called bestseller lists produced by book retailers, the media, and book publishers are often self-serving.

They shamelessly list the books they want you to buy - and will feature books they think people should buy but don't (not in large numbers anyway.)

And as Mark Twain once said, a classic is a book everyone knows they should read, but won’t.

Thanks for reading this.


Rob Parnell

The Writing Academy

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