Notebooking Part 3 of 3 - Skill Bill

Whether writing is a full time job or not, skill building is an important step towards getting published. Meet Skill Bill. My homework, assignment, writing prompt, note taker.

When I study the craft of writing, I shift into student mode. I underline in my books, write comments in the margins, and work my assignments in Skill Bill.

Page After Page and Chapter After Chapter both by Heather Sellers has writing assignments at the end of each chapter. In Skill Bill, I outlined the chapters of Between the Lines by Jessica Page Morrell.

Andy Couturier teaches great techniques in Writing Open the Mind: Tapping the Subconscious to Free the Writing and the Writer. One of my favorite exercises is in the first chapter.

Important notes, writing mantras, teacher comments are quick to find in Skill Bill. Now, remember I said, no writer knows it all. Good writers are forever learning, better writers are practicing what they learn.

Remember I said, study interviews of other writers. Sent you over to Paris Review. Encouraged you to subscribe and get the four-volume set. Skill Bill holds quotes by Truman Capote, William Falkner, and others. More recent entries include assignments from Dancing With The Gorilla blog.

Learning to construct great sentences, analyzing short stories, reading author interviews, working through writing exercises, are just a few of the ways to improve our writing. Use a notebook to keep everything you learn in one convenient, easy to find, pseudo-reference book created by you for you.

Without a doubt any writer can keep a number of notebooks. Right now, my magic number seems to be three.

• Blog Heaven for scrawling out blogging ideas ahead of time
• Infernal Journal for insights into myself and life
• Skill Bill for note taking, writing exercises, mantras, and etc

If you keep a notebook, consider how it supports your writing. If you're just starting, I hope this short series has encouraged you to try notebooking. Once you start and stick with it, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it.

Any questions?

John Steinbeck on Relationships

I got a little insight about relationships from John Steinbeck's writings published online at The Paris Review, in a compiled interview, compiled as opposed to live or face to face, Steinbeck wrote "The human mind, particularly in the present, is troubled and fogged and bee-stung with a thousand little details from taxes to war worry to the price of meat. All these usually get together and result in a man's fighting with his wife for that is the easiest channel of relief for inner unrest."

Guys seldom argue with other guys, especially guy friends. They pick fights with their wives or girlfriends out of frustrations, stresses, and pressures. These days women might do the same, considering the stresses of being a career mom. If married or committed couples are connected fibers, like a knitted sweater or a quilt, it makes sense that life's burdens would take toll on the 'garment or covering'.

Remember this when writing a character who is strained and stretched by circumstances. He/she must find a "channel of relief for inner unrest." There are other outlets, too. Dean Koontz's character, Junior Cain, in From the Corner of His Eye, chose murder to lessen the turmoil in his soul. Montresor, in Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, carried a grievance in his heart towards a friend / acquaintance named Fortunato. Montresor avenged his grievance by burying Fortunato alive.

Visit The Paris Review website and read a few or all of the interviews, or do as I did and buy the interviews published in book form (the set wasn't out when I bought mine). You're going to enjoy the reads.

As writer's we can learn so much from legendary authors, not by reading only their stories, books, or biographies, but by adding to these diaries, letters, and interviews. What is your "channel of relief?"

Consider using a journal, short story, or poem, rather than a close connection, as your venting mechanism. It's less wounding and healthier. Any questions?

Cozy Up to Characters

I've spent some time at the Paris Review website reading interviews that span six decades. These interviews share insight into The Art of Fiction through authors like Faulkner, Hemingway, Wilder, and Capote, Welty, Vidal, Shaw, and Steinbeck, Kerouac, Updike, White, and many more.

As writers, we can learn from these masters, these idols. In his interview, William Faulkner stated that he read Don Quixote once a year. Faulkner named a few of his favorite writers. Then, he made this remark "I’ve read these books so often that I don’t always begin at page one and read on to the end. I just read one scene, or about one character, just as you’d meet and talk to a friend for a few minutes."

We can cozy up to our favorite characters by practicing Faulkner's habit of reading, again and again, the books, scenes or characters that move us, inspire us, motivate us, teach us. My list of books to read for 2009 includes two I've read before: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier and On Agate Hill by Lee Smith.

My re-reads for 2010 include:

Sufficient Grace by Darnell Arnoult

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Father and Son by Larry Brown, and

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Each of these reads have well written scenes and characters. I've used a pencil to mark my favorites. And will "roll them around in my mouth like marbles" as Darnell Arnoult suggests in her blog, Dancing with the Gorilla.

Make a list of books you can reread next year. Mark your favorite passages so you too can return, as Faulkner did, to visit with your friends and hang out in familiar places. Cozy up to characters by reading and reading again. It's a great way to learn and improve your craft. Any questions?