Straight From The Quill — Notes From The Writing Workshops

What We Talk About When We Talk About ‘Voice’

April 2, 2013 by Lauren B. Davis Leave a Comment

If you’re a writer or someone who loves literature, you probably read the title to this blog and understood immediately that I’m referencing Raymond Carver’s short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”

How wonderful for a writer to be known simply by the syntax of a title, a single sentence, or a certain tone.

Learn to love the sound of your own voice!

And that’s what we mean, when we talk about a writer’s voice. It’s that instantly recognizable unique something, which might be copied or parodied, but can never be stolen.

Filed Under: Straight from the Quill -- notes from the writing workshops, Writer's life, Writing process

Narrative Braid — The Teller And The Tale

February 25, 2013 by Lauren B. Davis 4 Comments

The other day in the Sharpening the Quill Writers’ Workshop I lead every month, I talked about what’s known as the Universal Story in narrative — the common structure beneath all kinds of narrative. It has a triune form (as do most fairy tales and religious imagery, but that’s something for another day) and consists of:

1. a beginning with what is familiar/comfortable … and how the protagonist is separated from the familiar.

2. a middle period of resistance and struggle

3. and finally and ‘end’ containing a transformation and return.

“Story” is more spiral than line.

Filed Under: Spirituality, Straight from the Quill -- notes from the writing workshops, Writer's life, Writer's Mental Health, Writing process

Mini Workshop — Conflict in Narrative

January 30, 2013 by Lauren B. Davis 4 Comments

Today’s blog is a mini-workshop for writers, on the subject of conflict in narrative.

For emerging writers, one of the most important aspects of story-telling is conflict. Something has to happen in a narrative, and what happens has to matter. By which I mean that whatever your protagonist wants has to be IMPORTANT — it has to have gravitas; it has to fully engage the reader.

The fictional tug of war between equal forces.

And once you decide on that conflict — what your character wants and why they can’t get it — the conflict must also be a power struggle between equal forces. In other words, it is imperative the reader is left in doubt as to the outcome.

Filed Under: Straight from the Quill -- notes from the writing workshops, Writing process

Books, books, and . . .

July 2, 2012 by Lauren B. Davis 6 Comments

I was teaching a writing workshop on Saturday and the subject of reading came up, as it often does. Students are not surprised when I suggest that, if they really want to be writers, they also have to be readers. What does seem to surprise some of them, though, is how much reading I suggest they do as a minimum requirement for the writers’ life: a book a week for life.

books . . .

“What? I don’t have the time for all that,” grumbles a student.

“Turn off the television,” I suggest.

Filed Under: Straight from the Quill -- notes from the writing workshops, Writer's life

We Remain Faithful

May 16, 2012 by Lauren B. Davis 6 Comments

Gustave Flaubert

“Talent is long patience.”
— Gustave Flaubert

A few years ago I lay on the couch in my living room, curled up into a fetal position, intermittently groaning and blinking back tears.

I felt as though everything I had worked for had been ripped away from me, as though I had arrived at the party to which I’d been invited, only to have the door slammed in my face, as though the fragile mask of competence I’d been wearing had been torn away, and the whole world now saw what a fraud I was.

Filed Under: Publishing, Straight from the Quill -- notes from the writing workshops, Writer's life, Writing process

10 Truths for Emerging Writers (hint: think slow)

March 16, 2012 by Lauren B. Davis 4 Comments

I heard from an emerging writer recently who said she’d been crushed, devastated, destroyed by the feedback she’s received on her book, which she recently self-published, and by the lack of sales. She was so convinced it was brilliant. Now she feels as though readers are idiots or else she’s utterly deluded. Either way, she’s done. Quit. She won’t write again.

Oh, dear.

Back at the beginning of time, before self-publishing became so popular, writers developed over years, sometimes decades. A writer became a writer by spending a lot of time reading, figuring out how writers he or she admired crafted wonderful books and, in turn, spending a fair period of time (often years) learning to do this him or herself.

Filed Under: Publishing, Straight from the Quill -- notes from the writing workshops, Writer's life, Writer's Mental Health, Writing process

Oh My, The Things I Don’t Know

November 11, 2011 by Lauren B. Davis 9 Comments

How many times are we told to write about what we know?

Too many.

I’ll be honest — I’m a magpie, by which I mean I’m someone who’s easily distracted when previously unnoticed bright shiny objects catch my eye. I believe this is a wonderful quality for a writer. Sure, we need discipline, stick-to-it-ness, focus and all that. We need to be able to get our butt in the chair, the pen in our fingers and slip down to the dreaming state where we can follow one word after another.

That’s a given.

Filed Under: Straight from the Quill -- notes from the writing workshops, Writer's life, Writing process

Watch the Birdie . . .

October 11, 2011 by Lauren B. Davis 4 Comments

"American Crow" by John James Audubon

Filed Under: Straight from the Quill -- notes from the writing workshops, Writing process

What’s more important, plot or great prose?

May 10, 2011 by Lauren B. Davis 5 Comments

What makes a great book?

My Best Beloved was recently at an insurance industry conference, from where he sent me an email saying he was in the midst of a discussion with an associate about literature.

I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to think of business folk taking a break from discussions of annuities and risk prevention to query the finer points of fiction.

In the course of the conversation the associate apparently asked My Best Beloved to ask me which I thought was more important–a great plot or fabulous word craft.

Here’s my answer:

Filed Under: Straight from the Quill -- notes from the writing workshops, Writing process

The Cranky Muse

April 5, 2011 by Lauren B. Davis 4 Comments

Last month during the Sharpening the Quill writing workshop I lead here in Princeton, one of my students mentioned that although her lifelong dream has been to be a writer, she’s been plagued over the past year or so by a series of illnesses that have kept her from writing as much as she’d like. At the same time, she feels more and more antsy, more irritable. Could this be, she wondered, some part of her subconscious trying to both sabotage her and urge her on at the same time?

Of course it could.

Filed Under: Straight from the Quill -- notes from the writing workshops, Writer's life, Writer's Mental Health, Writing process