Snippets

Welcome – especially to two newcomers (Pete and Phil) who are taking writing seriously enough to come to Writing Life this month. And many congratulations to Lynda E. Blake for completing her course: we are not saying goodbye, just “Well done!” Her diligence has paid off already because she’s now a published (and paid!) writer for Woman’s Weekly. From small beginnings . . .

We all have different reasons for wanting to write and – being in touch with many people across the world through my mailing list - I learn a bit about what they want. Even though many of them say they don’t want publication, most of them do really. It’s an innate desire to share.

In the first instance, of course, what we all start with is a desire to make our words fluent, presentable and admirable; then we know they’re worth sharing. To this end, Writing Life endeavours to shine the light.

As some of you know, I’ve been busy ‘downsizing’. That means clearing out boxes and bags and folders full of paperwork I’ve accumulated over the twenty or more years I’ve lived in this house – and all the stuff I had before that too. There are disadvantages to having heaps of storage space! I kept it because I didn’t trust my brain to retain it, and how could I? I won’t go into the details of all that’s gone before but I’ll share with you some gems I’ve found from my first ever ‘Writing for Pleasure and Profit’ evening class:

Seven Basic Needs (worthy of use in stories)
To live – fight or flight
To love – love story
To belong – accepted, or laughed at
To feel secure – a job, home, security
To think well of oneself – to preserve morale (not to grass on a friend etc)
To be well-thought-of by others – chasing status symbols (revelling in public acclaim etc)Something to look forward to.

A topic to write on: ‘A lonely face in the crowd’

When Writing Romance:
Everything about story structure and characterisation applies but there must be a love scene.
If in doubt about your own experience, buy true romance and sex magazines and manuals. (Did I really say that to a roomful of clever people?)

Shirley Conran wrote ‘Lace’.
Here, she lists her method:
# Title first
# 25 page synopsis
# 6 week bus trip around USA
# Consulted psychiatrist with character ideas
# “Apply seat of pants to seat of chair.”
# Longhand in an exercise book for 13 hours a day
# 6 days a week for 12 months
# “Don’t let anything stand in your way.”

How to Use Roget’s Thesaurus
“The dinosaur book,” someone called it.
“I threw it away, I couldn’t make head nor tail of it,” said someone else.
If you’ve the Roget’s Thesaurus version rather than the A-Z then I suppose this is believable.
With the Roget’s version, say you want a word that means something like ‘opposite’ and something like ‘involved’ but you just can’t think what it is.
Go to the listings at the back of the book to find the words you do know and there’ll be a choice of pages to turn to in the front section of the book.
‘Involved’ gives you disorder; convoluted; obscure style; in debt. ‘Opposite’ gives you a clutch of possible pages to turn to as well. You can look at all the pages and find a remarkable number of words to fit the meaning you’re looking for but you might’ve found it already: I did. Convoluted was the word I wanted.

My dad taught me to use Roget's Thesaurus: such a simple thing to have done and so valuable.