Do you write essays?
I’ve never really considered myself as an essayist. Yet despite that lack of focus, I guess I have written quite a number of essays over the years; I just haven’t called them essays. I guess most bloggers wouldn’t write “essayist” on their CV either, yet many personal blog posts and many of those on niche blogs could be called essays.
“But not many writers start out with dreams of becoming essayists. We want to be journalists, short story writers, novelists or even travel writers, but rare is the scribe who sets out to be an essayist. Personal essays happen by accident, when in the process of setting out to find stories, we end up finding ourselves. Every frustration, adulation, inclination, anguish or misery then becomes fodder for the personal essayist’s pen.” Mridu Khullar
Whether we call them essays, posts, articles or ramblings on the net is not the point. We are all writers, all trying to communicate our thoughts, ideas, experiences and whatever with whoever is listening or reading. This is the true wonder of blogging and the amazing power of the internet. It is so democratic; anyone can be a writer and can make connections with anyone else with access to the internet.
If, however, you do want to take the path of calling yourself an essayist, can I recommend the article I quoted from above. The link is below and the author writes about how she goes about writing the personal essay.
Links:
- Writing the personal essay by Mridu Khullar.
- Creative Nonfiction – more articles on non-fiction writing.
How can my writing sparkle?
The web is about words. No matter how visual and audible it becomes, it continues to be about the words.Blogging is about writing. Many claim that content is king. If content is king, then the army that protects and defends the king is the written word. (Lorelle VanFossen)
It remains true that the web is certainly about words. Billions of the little critters. It is no longer a web but a very crowded maze.
- If you want your words to stand out then they have to be good.
- If you want your words to be good, then they must be readable.
- If you want your words to be readable then you have to take care and make sure they are the best you can write.
- If you want your words to be the best you can write you have put in the effort to make sure that they shine with a polish that is sparkling.
How do you make your words sparkle?
Over the last year or so I have been regularly posting articles about writing hints on this blog. In all there are now over 80 articles where I write about these writing hints (click here or go to the Contents or Categories on the sidebar). Reading these articles would be a good starting point. As you read through the hints, make a note or a list of those that you can put into practice over the coming days. As you work on these hints your writing should improve.
The quote at the top of this article was written by Lorelle VanFossen. In her article called Blogging is about writing Lorelle lists 30 ways of improving the writing on your blog. Many of these tips apply to general writing too. Many apply to novel and story writing, non-fiction, magazine articles and so on. The list she has written is worth printing out and sticking somewhere prominent where you can read through it often – and put the hints into practice.
The Injustice of being a Writer
No Comments »11th April, 2007; Category: The Writer's Life
Forgive me if this article sounds like sour grapes.
Allow me to have a little whinge.
There is no justice or fairness in the world of writing. I’ve known this for years. I guess it just reflects the wider world of business and life in general. Life just isn’t fair. When the story of an ordinary cat can jag such a huge publishing contract I have to question why I slave away at writing all day for very little financial return. Here’s an extract of the story that turned my normally pleasant nature into a seething volcanic eruption of… well… I hope you get the picture. I wasn’t a happy camper.
AMONG the great literary figures of our time, few have made as much money as fast as Dewey, the Iowa library cat. To the astonishment of the US literary fraternity, a New York publisher has paid $1.25m for a book about the life of a fluffy orange cat who lived for 19 years in a library.
The happy recipient of what is believed to be a record advance for a book about a pet is Vicki Myron, the librarian who looked after Dewey in Spencer, Iowa.
Publishing executives calculate that the book will need to sell at least 250,000 hardback copies to cover the cost of the advance, but editors at Grand Central Publishing are convinced that Dewey will become a runaway bestseller. “You can’t underestimate the market out there for people who love animals,†said Karen Kosztolnyik, who will edit the book.
Positive spin:
Now that I’m over the sheer injustice of this amazing story, let’s put a positive spin on the situation. If this can happen to the keeper of an ordinary cat, it can happen to anyone. It inspires me to keep writing because I never know when the next story I write or the next blog post I’ll publish could be the big break-through event in my writing career. Every writer could be just one story or one book proposal or one blog post away from an amazing turnaround in fortunes. The publishing world is bristling with stories like this one.
Reality check:
The reality is far different, however, for the vast majority of writers. Most of us will labour away for years on modest incomes – or no income at all. Many writers and bloggers do not do it for the money at all. Their reward comes from the very act of writing, from the joy of creating words and stories that please just themselves or perhaps just a handful of readers. Just like Shrek tried to explain to Donkey that ogres have many layers like an onion, so too the writing life has many layers.
Link:
- Read the whole story here.
Book Review: Against a Peacock Sky
Against a Peacock Sky written by Monica Connell. Published by Penguin Books (Viking) in 1991.
Monica Connell grew up in Northern Ireland and is an anthropologist who went to live in a rural village in Nepal. She lived and worked for two years with a Nepali family, sharing their celebrations, their hardships, their food and their hard labour in the fields to provide a subsistence living. One family took her in, sharing their everyday lives on a very personal level with her, allowing her to virtually become one of the family.
Monica witnessed first hand the villagers’ way of life. She learned how to care for the animals, how to plant and harvest rice and the best way to hunt a boar. She relates the significance of their many religious ceremonies, beliefs and festivals. She relates – without any hint of being judgmental – the importance of various customs employed to appease the local gods in order to have a successful crop or produce healthy animals.
This is a fascinating account of life in rural Nepal as it has been for many centuries and had remained largely untouched by outside influences. Here and there in her narrative, however, there are hints of change in their somewhat cloistered existence. Outside pressures were beginning to show. For example, one young man finds work building roads in nearby India, and he leaves permanently. The old ways were beginning to change, and I suspect if the author returned to that village today there would be many more changes apparent.
I would suspect that this book is now out of print. I bought mine via the internet as a used copy after I had experienced a touch of Nepali life when I went to visit there in 2006. To read more of my impressions of life in Nepal, go to my Travel Blog, then go to the Contents on the sidebar, or click on several of the Categories, also on the sidebar.