I read it on Facebook.

  • Facebook is destroying small talk. You open your mouth, and they say, ‘I know, I read it on Facebook.

    — Adair Lara

    Thursday is Quote Day on The Write Spot Blog. I like to post something interesting someone has said, or pithy or memorable. Adair Lara’s writing matches all three.

    Adair Lara comments, lifted from Facebook:

    “Facebook is destroying small talk. You open your mouth, and they say, ‘I know, I read it on Facebook.’” — January 24, 2014

    Adair on Passwords: “I recall, children, a time when you didn’t have to spend part of each day trying to remember passwords, looking them up in your password file cleverly called something else, like sammy’s dog, putting them in wrong, having to get the password from the site which entails remembering whether you said the name of your maternal grandfather was Tom or Thom, and then having your new password being called weak or strong, and capitalizing the “H” to please them (you’ve employed a variation of the same password since you were 36) and repeating this fricking exercise ten times a day, when who cares whether somebody can get into your toon photos account or not?” — February 6, 2014

    Want Adair humor in person? Take her class, information posted on Facebook, May 8, 2014:

    Shouldn’t you finish that book?

    You put a lot of work in on it, and then laid it aside, or got too busy at work, or lost faith in it.

    Before that, though, you put a lot of time and talent into it.

    You might enjoy a day at my house entirely devoted to writers with stalled projects. I’ll help you decide whether to take it up again, and providing you by the end of the day with a specific plan for doing just that –and perhaps a writing partner, or writing group, to boot. You might decide to at least try to carve some sellable essays out of it.

    Also I’ll give you some killer voice exercises I’ve been developing. You will certainly enjoy meeting your fellow writers. For those who have a completed draft, we’ll talk about publishing/self-publishing.

    Get ready for the workshop by: a) assembling your manuscript and reading it b) researching the competition on Amazon.

    Limited to 15. $175 Sunday June 22 9-4:30 45 minutes off for lunch

  • Say to yourself, ‘Maybe what I have written today is messy, clumsy, raggedy, but that’s my poem for today.’ Maybe there is a neater poem buried inside it that I can work on tomorrow.

    — Naomi Shihab Nye

    Naomi Shihab Nye, April 2014 Writer magazine, “Mystical Jolt,” by Robert Hirschfield

  • “If you want to write about a ‘broken heart,’ it’s good to know what a broken heart feels like. I also believe you need to take the time and not rush things, keep it playful . . . and listen to the world around [you].”

    — Jörgen Elofsson

    Jörgen Elofsson, songwriter for Kelly Clarkson, excerpt from the May 2014 issue of The Writer Magazine.

  • Some days I fear writing dreadfully, but I do it anyway. I’ve discovered that sometimes writing badly can eventually lead to something better. Not writing at all leads to nothing.

    — Anna Quindlen

    Anna Quindlen was asked this question. She answers:

    Some days I fear writing dreadfully, but I do it anyway. I’ve discovered that sometimes writing badly can eventually lead to something better. Not writing at all leads to nothing. — April 20, 2014 Parade magazine.

    The Writer’s Block, 786 Ideas To Jump-Start Your Imagination by Jason Relulak.

  • Discover, flaunt, and celebrate your authentic assets. 

    — Dame Edith Sitwell

    “Her early work was often experimental, creating melody, using striking conceits, new rhythms, and confusing private allusions. Her efforts at change were resisted, but, as the New Statesman observed, ‘losing every battle, she won the campaign,’ and emerged the high priestess of twentieth-century poetry.”    Poetry Foundation

  • You just have to fight your way through.

    — Ira Glass

    Ira Glass is host and producer of This American Life.

    David Shiyang Liu recorded Ira talking about storytelling.  In Part One of the interview, you can watch Ira in the recording studio. You can also read about parts two, three and four in the caption.

    In Part Three Ira talks about the creative process. Watch Ira’s words unfold in a whimsical way.

    Ira Glass, the art of storytelling (typed with minor modifications):

    Nobody tells people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me, is that all of us who do creative work . . . we get into it, and we get into it because we have good taste, but it’s like there’s a gap.

    For the first couple of years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good; it’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good.

    But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you.

    A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit.

    The thing I would like to say to you, with all my heart, is that most everybody I know who does interesting, creative work . . . they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste. They could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it felt short. It didn’t have this special thing that they wanted it to have.

    Everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you are going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase . . . it’s totally normal.

    The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.  Do a huge volume of work.

    Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. It’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close that gap. The work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.

    In my case, I took longer to figure out how to do this than anybody I’ve ever met.

    It takes awhile, it’s going to take you awhile, it’s normal to take awhile.

    You just have to fight your way through that.

  • The temptation is to not go where it hurts. The temptation is to lie in order to resist the painful truth.

    If we become honest in our talking and dealing with people, if we go deep and tell the genuine truth, will that carry over to our writing? And will we then go deep and become authentic in our writing?

    The temptation is to not go where it hurts. The temptation is to lie in order to resist the painful truth.

    I recently read Pack Up the Moon by Rachael Herron and The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. Both of these authors went deep in their writing and the resulting books are genuine, authentic and fabulous reads. . . where the characters and their problems deeply touched me.  Rachael and Meg did not resist writing about painful truths.

    How about you? Can you recommend books that deeply touched you?  What other authors go deep in their writing? I can think of Jodi Piccoult. Your turn.

  • In an interview in the February 2014 issue of The Writer magazine, interviewer Alicia Anstead asked Monica Wood, “One of the nuns who taught you as a child said explorers should have courage, goals, imagination and, finally, humility. Which of these is most important for a writer, and why?”

    I have a sign in my studio:  Run your own race. Some other writer will always write lovelier books, reach more readers, make more money, win more awards. the writing trade – which is full, full, full of rejections and failure – is a lifelong lesson in humility, and we are wise to take that lesson into the other arenas of our life. Writing is engaging, gratifying and often profoundly discouraging and difficult. But not as discouraging and difficult as coal mining or warfare.

    — Monica Wood

    Monica Wood is the author of When We Were the Kennedys: A Memoir from Mexico, Maine, her story about growing up in the 1960s in a Catholic family in a mill town in northern New England.

  • Bruce would always give me this advice: ‘Be in the moment. Just find the truth of the scene.’ I’m not a trained actor, so that just seemed like drama school hogwash, but the further we got into the  movie, it really made a lot of sense to me, and then I started thinking, maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do in comedy too. The truths might be very different, the levels of reality might be different, but you have to commit 100 percent either way.

    — Will Forte

    In an interview with The Costco Connection, Will Forte – an eight-year vet of Saturday Night Live – talks about his experience working with Bruce Dern in the movie “Nebraska.”  When asked what he learned from Bruce Dern, Will answered, “Bruce would always give me this advice: ‘Be in the moment. Just find the truth of the scene.’ I’m not a trained actor, so that just seemed like drama school hogwash, but the further we got into the  movie, it really made a lot of sense to me, and then I started thinking, maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do in comedy too. The truths might be very different, the levels of reality might be different, but you have to commit 100 percent either way.”

    Note from Marlene: I think this is true with writing also.  When “the truth of the scene” is conveyed, writing is strong and readers feel a visceral reaction.

    Excellent resource book for writing good scenes:  Make A Scene by Jordan Rosenfeld.