 For Authors: March 03, 2010 Issue [#3588] |
  For Authors
This week: Edited by: Cubby  
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Hello, everyone! Welcome to this edition of the For Authors newsletter.  This week's topic is focused on words, but first off, I'd like to share a few quotes with you. Enjoy!
Quotes:
"Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become, in the hands of one who knows how to combine them!"
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
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"Words are... the most powerful drug used by mankind."
~ Rudyard Kipling
*
"You can stroke people with words."
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
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"All words are pegs to hang ideas on."
~ Henry Ward Beecher
*
"But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think."
~ George Gordon Byron
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"A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day."
~ Emily Dickenson
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Creating Life through Words
Letters make up words; words bring us imagery. Words create emotion, warmth, chills, sorrow, happiness, and so on. We not only feel sensations from words, but we have the power to create life.
Pretty scary, eh?
Actually, it's pretty amazing what we can do, if we choose to.
There's no doubt words are effective, whether we hear them, read them, or write them. Words can change lives, enhance lives, and create lives. They are powerful, indeed.
Many writers have heard the phrase: Breathe life into your characters. But you also need to breathe life into your setting, descriptions, plot, actions, and so on. You don't want your well-rounded characters in a flat setting that may as well be a backdrop for a play. You should not tell the reader what is happening when you can show them through action. If you have an animal in a scene, make sure it does something like thump its tail or perk its ears up or arch its back. Otherwise it may as well be stuffed.
How can you breathe life into a brick? someone asks.
What color is the brick? Describe its texture, its weight. How does it feel if you run your finger along the clay? Is it old? Crumbling? Is it cold and damp from being half buried in the dirt for decades? Maybe it's warm from the afternoon sun. Is it still part of an old foundation? A forgotten brick road? What sort of memories might this brick have if it could talk?
Yes, even a brick can pulsate.
Breathe life into your words and you will have created a living world for which the reader will fall into and take part in a whole new dimension.
 Here are a few links for further reading on ---:
http://www.wordistryonline.com/LifeMurmursBlog/Home.html
http://confidentwriting.com/2009/05/writing-911-5-tips-to-breathe-new-life-into-...
And a book to check out:
Live Writing: Breathing Life into Your Words (Paperback) by Ralph Fletcher
 Now for a prompt...  Look around the room this very moment. Quickly choose three objects and write them down. Now... breathe life into them!
May you have an inspiring week and an exceptionally inspiring month!
Keep on Writing!
 Cubby ") |
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~FEEDBACK~
BlueEyesInk 
Has anyone finished a piece and just.. shuddered? I've finished some work and thought to myself, that's the most reprehensible piece of work I think I've ever seen... but I had to write it for some reason.
What's even stranger is when others like it!
~ I believe that if you get a strong emotional response out of what you have read or written, you've got something substantial. There's been a few times after I've completed something that my heart started racing and I felt strangly elated. It's like you know it's above and beyond what you normally write and you... well... shudder!
Jessica A. Martinez
Thanks so much Cubby, I found the resourses you offered up in the newsletter very informative and have added them to my favorites.
~ You are welcome. Glad you liked them!
J. A. Buxton 
((I got caught up in the rules and restrictions but then one day I said the heck with all that and wrote how I wanted...in other words, I wrote for myself and....voila. My voice emerged! ))
This is in response to the above comment from jane has brain cloud. Every now and then I'll get a review about one of my stories where that person states that is not how sentences are supposed to be written. They then go through the whole story and rearrange multiple sentences to reflect their style of writing.
Even though I welcome all comments, this type of review is one I find extremely annoying. Being a lady, though, I politely tell them that I write like I speak, and sometimes I speak crookedly. Don't change your voice, jane, not for anyone!
~ This is the hardest part of reading a review on a writer's own item. Though the writer may need to polish off a few things, the reviewer sends their own honest (and hopefully, encouraging) opinion. Neither writer or reviewer are perfect. Just take what you feel will improve your work and leave the rest. You will emerge through your own voice. But always consider what a reviewer has to offer. You don't have to change a thing, if you don't want to.
mousybrown
Cubby,
I loved the quotes, particularly the first one: "The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them. " ~ Raymond Chandler
Thanks so much for your hard work in putting out the newsletters.
Jean
~ Thank you very much! I'm so glad you enjoyed the quotes.
LJPC - the tortoise
Hi Cubby! Thanks for a very important and informative newsletter. Many of us dream to get our novels published and any help we can get is much appreciated. Thanks for the great links. -- Laura
~ You are very welcome! Sometimes it only takes a wee bit of inspiration to bring writers one step closer to their dream.
BigCat
Thanks Cubby for a great letter - very inspiring!
And congratulations on your grandchild.
BigCat
~ Thanks! Grandchildren are beyond belief! 
 Thank you all for the wonderful feedback!
As always...
Have a wonderful week!
AND KEEP ON WRITING!!!
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