Why Writers Run
theatlantic.com – Wednesday November 11, 2015
From Homer’s The Iliad to A.E. Housman’s poem about an athlete dying young, there’s no shortage of literary depictions of running. “Move, as the limbs / of a runner do,” writes W.H. Auden. “In orbit go / Round an endless track.” There’s also a long tradition of writers leaving their pens or screens behind to stride along roads, tracks, and trails. Jonathan Swift, according to Samuel Johnson, would “run half a mile up and down a hill every two hours” during his 20s. Louisa May Alcott ran since her youth: “I always thought I must have been a deer or a horse in some former state,” she wrote in her journal, “because it was such a joy to run.” Despite this correlation, The New Yorker’s Kathryn Schulz recently lamented how few books capture the mindset of the runner in descriptive terms, citing Thomas Gardner’s new collection of essays Poverty Creek Journal as the best exception.
University of Utah offers year-long novel-writing course
college.usatoday.com – Tuesday November 10, 2015
Professors demand a lot and, when it comes to writing assignments, putting words to paper can feel like you’ve been asked to write a novel.
Actually, for some students at the University of Utah, that’s exactly what they’re tasked to do.
9 ways to trick yourself into writing a novel
mashable.com – Monday November 9, 2015
November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, for short). This is the year you complete the book of your dreams.
Sometimes all you need is a little motivation. Trick yourself into completing your novel this month by trying one (or all) of the strategies below.
11 authors' strategies for overcoming writer's block
mashable.com – Monday November 9, 2015
Writer's block — an author's worst nightmare.
The dreaded lack of creative ideas and inability to produce new work has writers across the world trembling in fear.
Famed novelists F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ray Bradbury are just two of many creative minds that have suffered from this incorrigible mental block. And let's face it, if a writer tells you its never happened to them, they're probably lying.
Mashable compiled the strategies different authors use to overcome writer's block, which should come in handy since it's National Novel Writing Month.
The Writing Teacher’s Hypocrisy
clapway.com – Monday November 9, 2015
The hardest thing about teaching people how to write is teaching them to make mistakes, to not be afraid, and to write what they want to write. Most of my students were more concerned with the product than the process, which is what kills good writing. How can someone produce a good piece of writing if s/he is counting how many points I will take off for each grammatical error? How can an essay be enticing if the author’s main concern is where their thesis statement belongs, or that there are only two body paragraphs in the essay instead of three? How can a teacher teach someone to write if they are expected to count the grammatical errors, or evaluate the formulaic essay? That is one reason I stopped teaching. I was a hypocrite! Writers become writers when they take risks when they learn how to enter the zone, when they make a million mistakes, delete drafts, and revisit a piece over and over again. How could I not teach that? I was not an effective teacher because I couldn’t teach my students that their process of writing was valuable. Standardized education teaches students to earn a grade in the same way that they will earn a salary someday.
Writers on the pain of hindsight in publishing: 'It's like a bad breakup – you have to move on'
theguardian.com – Monday November 9, 2015
How do you let go of a book you’ve written? Viv Groskop, Sathnam Sanghera and others offer their advice for bouncing back from the post-publication blues.
This Week in Fiction: Mark Haddon on Writing Stories as Complex as the Real World
newyorker.com – Monday November 9, 2015
Your story in this week’s issue, “The Weir,” is set in Oxford, alongside the Thames, near Wytham Woods. Why did you choose to stage such a sad event—an attempted suicide—in this bucolic terrain?
What defines good writing?
blog.oup.com – Sunday November 8, 2015
What distinguishes good writing from bad writing? How can people transform their writing to make it more powerful and more effective? Are universities teaching students how to become better writers? In order to answer these questions and others, we sat down with Geoffrey Huck, an associate professor of the Professional Writing Program at York University.
Sarah Waters, Ross Raisin, Adam Foulds, Andrew Cowan, Helen Simpson share writing tips, favourite books by young writers
thebookseller.com – Saturday November 7, 2015
The Sunday Times/Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writers of the Year Award has relaunched in 2015, and will recognise the best literary work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry by a British or Irish writer of 35 and under.
Here, past winners of the prize share their favourite books written by writers aged 35 and under, and their writing tips.
Chicago authors share their No. 1 tip to writing a novel
chicagotribune.com – Friday November 6, 2015
November is National Novel Writing Month, a campaign that challenges would-be authors to write at least 50,000 words by Nov. 30. With that in mind, we asked local authors to share their No. 1 tip on writing a novel.
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