Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

The more you write, the more you realize how hard it is to get anyone to take any notice of you. Newbies often worry that their words are going to have some awful and monumental impact on people - way out of proportion to reality. First time novelists often email me in varying states of panic, asking if it's okay to say this or that. Others are so afraid of putting their name to their own writing, they want to invent pseudonyms - usually just before publication! In case their own words come back to bite them somehow. In today's world, it's hard to even get noticed, let alone raise a stir in people enough to provoke a response. There's about billion new words appearing on the Internet every day. In the real world, probably a billion again appearing in new books, newspapers and magazines. Writers everywhere are trying to read and to be heard, to be taken seriously. And yet, a celebrity's kiss will always be more compelling news. You've got to see ...

Rob Parnell It's one of those bizarre phenomena - the way writers see-saw between a love/hate relationship with their own writing. You're in the throes of a story or an article - you don't want to stop because you're feeling inspired. Each word and phrase seems to resonate with profound meaning. The drama and/or the thought process seems to be unfolding well - and you're on a high. Finally, it seems as though the hotline between your thoughts and the page are in sync - you're writing well and all is right with the world. This feeling can last a few hours, even a few days... ... until you look back at what you've done. Then the angst sets in. The writing you thought was superb suddenly seems clunky and inadequate. The phrases you particularly liked now seem awkward and ill-formed. Worse, your intellect seems exposed: you feel as though your writing shows you to be the hack you never wanted to be: the metaphors lack depth and the imagery is weak. The writing d...