INKSPILL: End of Day 1

 

We hope you have enjoyed INKSPILL, that you have managed to find some time to write, that you were inspired by some of the posts, articles and videos.

A BIG THANK YOU to our Guest Writer, William Gallagher, who gave his time to prepare articles, video and writing exercises for us – all for FREE.

Don’t forget we are back again tomorrow, with Guest Writers Heather Wastie and Charlie Jordan, more motivational videos and all sorts of other posts.

Enjoy your rest and see you again tomorrow for our final INKSPILL sessions!

INKSPILL: Night Write

Are you awake enough to write? No rules on this one, whatever genre you would like (articles, blog posts, poetry, prose) whatever takes your fancy and remember what William said in his video CHALLENGE YOURSELF, if you usually write poetry choose something else and vice versa. No time restrictions on this one either – just do what you feel is right.

 

My Favourite Thing About Facebook

 

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INKSPILL: Speed Write – How to Produce an Article in Less than 30 Minutes

 I am not going to teach you short hand, which is the perfect way to write faster. Our evening speed write is just a fast free write exercise really.

This time though you won’t hit it cold. You are going to have just 5 minutes (set a timer) to do a rough plan, then you can try a speed write. Can you write the whole piece in just 10 minutes?

TASK: Choose one of the following and write a short blog post or article.

1. Why I Blog
2. Interview with (someone who’s no longer living – you make up the answers you think they’d give)
3. 5 Books You Need to Read

Start with an outline

Think about what you want to write, then outline it.

If it’s an article, jot down the subheadings. If it’s a web copy, write down the points you want to cover.

If you prefer, you can also write more detailed outline for easier writing later. Give some keywords to every topic or even paragraph in the article.

Surprisingly this action will possibly spawn more ideas for you in the writing stage later. Most importantly, once you have the outline, writing will be a easier.

 

Now set the timer 10 minutes and start writing.

 Allow another 10 minutes to edit and polish.

There you have it, an entire article/blog post in less than 30 minutes. DONE!

 

SHARE your links or post your speed writes in the comment box on this thread.

ENJOY!

 

INKSPILL What We Get From Writing – Guest Writer William Gallagher

 Our final article from William Gallagher today is a great read and also a thought-provoking title. Let us know what writing does for you, what do you get from writing? Thanks William for being part of the 2nd INKSPILL Writing Retreat.

©2014 Lee Allen Photography

 

 

What we get from writing

Hand on heart, this is a tough one. I was very flattered that Nina Lewis asked me to talk to you for this Inkspill Writing Retreat but I was aware that my first thoughts to talk to you about were all about things that I do constantly. Things I know and care about and practice. I think the point of a writing retreat is to stretch you and I feel I ought to be stretched too.

This is me stretching. I’m not sure how much value that has for you, it feels like I’m doing calisthenics and you’re waiting there in your smart leotard waiting for me to get off the mat. You’ll be waiting a while. I’m very unfit.

And I don’t know what I get from writing.

I know that if you or I had any sense at all, we would have normal jobs and proper careers and we might even find a way to make that not feel ditchwater-dull and boring. I know that when we do have to juggle those normal jobs with a writing life, we are split between having to deep-mine our selves and our very souls on our own – and then bound off into social occasions with colleagues. Colleagues who we work with but who probably don’t get writing.

I was at a thing recently where some smart and charming writers were talking about why they write and a fella in the audience told them that it was because they wanted to make a bestseller. They wanted to make money. It took the speakers a beat to find a way to politely say no, that’s not it at all.

Bestsellers are great and the idea that I can reach out not only to you but to oodles of people is simultaneously exciting and terrifying. I prefer it when it’s just us, but if oodles of others come, well, you put the kettle on. I’ll get the extra biscuits.

It is possible to make a living from writing and I do, but the aim and what I think I actually get from this life is the opportunity to write better. Paying the mortgage and feeding myself is important, but the longer I can do that, the more I can do that, the greater my chance of becoming the writer I long to be.

So what I get from writing is writing. I feel I’m short-changing you there. I live for the moments – and it is only moments – when the world is forgotten and I am in my writing, I am working at my best and hopefully making that best become better.

There are only two things that improve my writing and the biggest one is time. Making more time to write and then spending that time writing, it’s crucial.

But the other is using writing to head out into unsafe waters. I interviewed a poet the other day and as delightful as she was, she also goaded and challenged me into writing a poem. It was dreadful. But the experience of writing in a new area, reaching for something new in me, that was electrifying.

So there’s the exercise. I am okay with writing you this personal blog chiefly because it’s you and you’ve got that kind of face, I feel I can tell you anything. But let me turn it into a writing exercise: I need to feel I’m giving you something practical that you can actually use. And I know this is practical, I know you can use this: write something new.

Really new. If you’re a poet, write a short story. If you’re a novelist, write a radio play. Go somewhere new in topic and in form.

There is nothing else that can stretch you like writing in new directions and that stretching, that’s it, that’s what I get from writing.

William

Buy Books By William Gallagher on Amazon 

 

INKSPILL – Writing Doctor Who – Guest Writer William Gallagher

©2014 Lee Allen Photography

Writing Doctor Who

Do be careful what you wish for: it can be bloody hard work. I write Doctor Who radio dramas for Big Finish and you can’t just swan in and cook this stuff up. Doctor Who has to be inside you: I don’t believe you can write for a show or a book range or a magazine if you don’t already read it and love it. Plus, the producers at Big Finish do know and love Doctor Who, you have to step up to their level in the quality of your writing and it’s not easy.

Still, I hope that I will continue to write them forever. That is partly because I was a Doctor Who fan growing up – and it never leaves you, especially not when the TV show is back and is capable of such great drama – but also because it is radio drama and also because it stretches me tremendously.

Whatever type of writing you do, have a think about radio drama. I don’t mean that you should definitely take it up, I’ve got enough competition without you coming along and blowing me out of the water, but think about the form. I love radio drama because I feel it’s very intimate and personal, plus it is life-support dependent upon dialogue.

I am a dialogue man. I’ve a friend who insists dialogue is the nice tasty little extra that you add at the end of a story and I’m surprised we’re still friends. If I don’t believe what your characters are saying, I don’t believe them and I don’t care about them. Let them be exterminated, so what?

Radio focuses you on dialogue like nothing else. It’s exciting creating an entire new world, both metaphorically in your writing and pretty literally in that this is Doctor Who and you’re making up a planet. But you have to convey that it’s, I don’t know, a desert planet with oases of Apple Stores and a great big, green, smelly monster. You could have the Doctor step out of the TARDIS and say “Oh, it’s Theta Beta Five, the famous desert planet – oh, no! A Smellosaurus! Quick, let’s buy an iPad”.

But nobody would be listening any more.

I’ve tried recently to explain why I love scriptwriting above all things and at first I thought it came down to this. You have to conjure characters, a story, a world and all the drama using only what people say. (Plus a few sound effects. Do listen to a Big Finish Doctor Who some time: the sound design is simply a marvel.)

But actually, I’ve come to realise that it’s much harder than that. And much more satisfying.

You can’t say it’s a desert planet. You can’t have villains saying what their dastardly plan is.

Russell T Davies, who with Julie Gardner brought Doctor Who back to TV in 2005, wrote once about a huge problem he had when moving on from writing soaps to writing drama. I’m paraphrasing but broadly what he said was: “In soaps, everybody says what they mean. In drama, they don’t even know what they mean.”

That’s a Damascus-level thought for me. I love and adore scriptwriting not because you’re telling stories using only what people say, you’re telling them only using what people do not.

Try it. Write me a scene with two characters and only dialogue, no settings, no description. One character wants something from the other – and for some reason, that you have to think of – he or she cannot tell that other person.

William

Doctor Who Radio Dramas and other books by William Gallagher on Amazon

 

 

 

 

INKSPILL Making Time to Write – Guest Writer William Gallagher

Making Time to Write

I could talk all day about this. And I do. I run full-day workshops on how to make more time for your writing and it comes down to many, many things you can do to shove other work out of your way. I wrote the book on it too. (I have always wanted to say that, thank you for the chance.) The book is The Blank Screen: productivity for creative writers.

I’d like to show you one thing that I think will help you the most, the quickest. It’s just how to handle your email.

Now, that sounds a bit flat: handling email doesn’t seem like a big deal. But you already know that it is and you know it is for two reasons. One is the overwhelming pressure of that gigantic inbox of yours and one is how email interruptions smash your concentration.

Fix the second one first. Switch the bloody bleep off. Turn off the notifications. Yes, there are going to be people whose emails you must see immediately and want to respond to right away. Many email systems let you nominate people as being VIPs and bleeps and notifications from them get through. Fine. But even if you can do that, resist.

Switch email off and make a vow. Some people vow to only check emails in the morning or only in the afternoon, but I suggest you just check it hourly. There’s no need to go cold turkey. But do it religiously hourly. If an email comes in at 9:01am, and I notice it, I still will not actually read it until 10:00am.

Because it makes exactly zero difference to the sender whether you reply in 59 minutes or 59 seconds yet it makes a massive difference to you. Read and reply only at the top of the hour and you’ve just got yourself a clear hour’s writing.

The overwhelming pressure problem is related. But cope by when you do read your emails, dealing with them. There and then. Don’t leave them sitting in your inbox throbbing at you until they scroll off the bottom of the screen.

Actually, do specifically this. Create a new archive mailbox. (How you do this varies a lot but Google the name of your email software and the words “create mailbox” and you’ll see instructions.) Now select every email in your inbox and drag the lot into that archive. Promise yourself you will read them all some day and accept that no, you won’t.

And accept that if it’s that important, you’ll remember to go looking or they’ll email you again anyway. Notice that I say archive, not delete. Don’t delete this stuff, I’ll go pale if you do that and I get you into trouble.

But.

Having now got a nice, gorgeous, empty inbox, wait one second and you’ll have new email in there.

Do this. Read that email. At the top of the hour. If it’s something you can reply to immediately, reply to it immediately.

If it’s something that will take you a bit longer – say because you need to ask someone about it – then create another mailbox called Follow Up or Action or Get On With This, something like that. Drag that email to that Follow Up and swear for real this time that you will look at it and act on it.

If it’s anything else, think about deleting it. I do keep emails when they’re just nice or part of a conversation or really anything other than obviously deletable stuff. You are probably keeping emails around that you think you might like to read some day, like my own email newsletter. Even with mine, delete it if you’re not going to read it now. Okay? Though, you know, have a glance at it first. (You can subscribe sign up here for my free weekly The Blank Screen newsletter full of productivity news and advice.)

Think of it this way. When an email comes in, ignore it to the top of the hour. And then when you do read it, decide right away: reply, postpone or trash it.

Do, defer or delete.

Just don’t leave it in your mailbox throbbing. Never read an email twice. I promise both that it will make you feel massively productive but it will also lift that burden of the giant inbox from your shoulders.

William

 

INKSPILL – How to Get Rejected – Guest Writer William Gallagher

How to Get Rejected

Write badly. That’ll do it. But of all the reasons you will get rejected – and you will, you know you will – writing badly is the best of them. It’s the most embarrassing, perhaps, and it may well shut more doors than anything else ever will, but it’s also the best for one key reason.

You can do something about it.

You can write better.

Now, it would be good if that were as easy as it sounds but your writing is under your control, or at least it is more than anything else. Focus on your writing and don’t be thrown by things you cannot know. That sounds a bit Hallmark Card-like and we are all cut and bloodied by rejection but do this: control what you can control and bollocks to everything you can’t.

Let me give you a fast example. I spent a couple of years as features editor on a computer magazine and I needed writers. I really needed them, I had money to pay them, I would search for them. And at the same time, I must’ve got around 200 completely unsolicited submissions. Writers writing to me out of the blue pitching me articles. They should have been a godsend to me but they weren’t.

Of the 200, I commissioned 1. He was fine, I’d have used him again if I’d ever needed to go back to the same topic. That’s not the key fact here. The key is that of the 200, I read 7.

And not only would I do the same today, so would you.

Of the other 193, a surprising number were about fashion. I was on a computer magazine. Many were handwritten and, again, hello, computer magazine. Plus you can tell me you’ve got years of experience but if you’re not typing your articles, no, you haven’t.

Equally, you can tell me that you studied my magazine but if you spell the title wrong or if you send me a 300-word article when we only ever ran 5,000-word pieces, I don’t need to read your piece to know you can’t do the job.

Writing is not a competition. Also, writing is not for you: it is for the reader. My job was not to read every piece and pat heads, it was to fill blank pages each month. Realise that, keep that in mind, and you’ll avoid rejections.

And when you are rejected, take it. You can grind your teeth all you like at home, just don’t ever show it. Let it go because it’s already gone. Nobody ever convinced an editor that they have made a wrong choice by arguing about it. If that sounds unfair, compare it to this: nobody ever successfully used wailing to convince a lover not to dump them.

This ridiculous writing life we have chosen might be art, I hope it is, but it is also a job and it is also real. You’re not playing. And the sometimes great, sometimes deeply depressing fact is that most people are. So small things like being a pro when you’re rejected really help you stand out.

William

©2014 Lee Allen Photography

 

William Gallagher’s Books on Amazon

See William Gallagher’s scribbles – books, Doctor Who radio dramas and the rest – on Amazon

 

INKSPILL: A Video from Guest Writer William Gallagher

INKSPILL

William has been kind enough to send us a video to start the evening session, so sit back and enjoy this wonderful insight.

Once again William, a BIG Thank You for giving us your time and wisdom!

 

 

 

INKSPILL – A Video From a Master – Stephen King

As the first shot of the video suggests there is language which may not be appropriate in this video. It lasts for just under an hour and mentions lots of modern literature. Enjoy!

 

 

INKSPILL – Free Writing – Activity

 

One thing I love about workshops & writing retreats is you end up with writing that otherwise may not have existed. Be as open as you can be approaching this activity and if you find more than one piece of writing coming through, then let it. Scribble pages of notes, work on it throughout the weekend. Let’s CREATE!

I am sure you know the term and have used automatic writing before, but just in case here is a simple definition:

Free writing

 

• Free writing is a prewriting technique in which a person writes continuously for a set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar, or topic. It produces raw, often unusable material, but helps writers overcome blocks of apathy and self-criticism. It is used mainly by prose writers and writing teachers.

  I often meet ‘why’ learners/ writers – people who need to know the reason behind what we are doing/achieving. Questions may arise about the calibre of writing we are about to produce… so here’s WHY.

  WHY?
• It makes you more comfortable with the act of writing.
• It helps you bypass the “inner critic” who tells you you can’t write.
• It can be a valve to release inner tensions.
• It can help you discover things to write about.
• It can indirectly improve your formal writing.
• It can be fun.

 

RULES FOR FREE WRITING:

• Write nonstop for a set period of time (10–20 minutes).
• Do not make corrections as you write.
• Keep writing, even if you have to write something like, “I don’t know what to write.”
• Write whatever comes into your mind.
• Do not judge or censor what you are writing.
• If you can, let GO of punctuation – this will help your writing flow.
• DEFINITELY DO NOT WORRY about your spellings or handwriting!

A twinkling eye can mean many things – start with someone who has a twinkle in their eye and see where it takes you…..

 

 

 

 

Here are some more fun ideas if you want to keep writing or have some spare time this weekend …. don’t forget to go and grab some lunch though!

Other than using this picture of street food as a prompt;

• List 10 book titles you might like to write.
• Write an imaginary letter to an Agent, tell them how wonderful you are!
• Pick a book off your shelf (or kindle) at random, open it at any chapter. Write down the first line. Find another chapter, this time write down the last line of the chapter. Now use the opening line to start your story (you’ve guessed it) the endline should be the 2nd sentence you wrote down. Limit yourself to 1000 words.

 

REMEMBER If you do any of these exercises link back to your blog post or post them as comments here, we would love to see/read the results!