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I don’t know how trouble got my contact details, but I’m finding it’s harder to get out of trouble, than it is to get off the Readers Digest mailing list!
Sharon won a free book of mine a few months ago and promised me a review, which she very kindly gave me. [Gratuitous self-promotion: read the review here.] She visits my blog and I love her posts, so when she asked me to review her book, of course I said yes. That’s how it starts. You do something nice for someone and it is, after all Support An Author Month…
I started reading her book on descriptions in writing, and as I am not a fiction writer, I had more lightbulb moments than an Oprah Fan Convention! It is an easy to absorb book for writers bristling with so many “oh yeah!” ideas I’ve never thought of… I read a few chapters, emailed and conned her into doing a guest post for me on a particular topic. Read a few more chapters and then went to do my usual thing, and start jotting down ideas for my own blog posts…
Whoa there Cate! You can’t do that! You can’t review someone’s book, then write your own posts on nearly every topic… Which would effectively mean I had lifted too much of her book content with my own spin. As much as I’d like to meet Sharon, I don’t want it to involve lawyers, or her standing on my doorstep wielding a mean looking rolling pin!
I had to email Sharon back and say, “I had to stop reading.” Thankfully, she took that as a compliment.
A few volumes which belong to my temptation shelf.
I read other books by writers and I take out the odd quote or concept and write about it. One very small part here and there, linked back to their work is fine. However, Sharon had done too good a job… the temptation was too much!
So what do you do when you read a novel or book which gets under your skin that effectively? Put it down and walk away quietly. Even if you don’t pick up a pen then, it goes into your subconscious and will revisit later. (I don’t usually use the word bristling, by the way. It’s in my head now, with “nose like a ski run.” I love that one! I want to use it. I have to, somewhere, somehow…)
You can return to that book later, but be a little more critical and be very, very aware when you are writing that it doesn’t creep in. I need a shelf of books which would be my red flag section. (Oh rats, flag… Um, sorry Sharon.) The most delectable, dangerous influencers would sit there ready to inspire, but to serve as a warning. The temptation shelf…
So please, save me from myself and get Sharon’s book. It is excellent. If you do that, I know I can’t write on those topics.
“Book Description: Turn Blah into Brilliant with this Jam-Packed Volume on DescriptionSharon Lippincott’s delectable writing gives you the spoonful of sugar to help the description medicine go down. In this slim volume– forty-eight short lessons-you will be so busy learning to hang on to inspiration, color up your words, and breathe life into your writing, you won’t even realize you’ve also learned to ditch dummy subjects, clear out dead “would”, and apply tips for using dozens of other description power tools.In reading this book, writers in any genre will discover
- An expanded perspective on the nature of description
- The difference between active and passive description
- How nouns and verbs impact description
- The importance of using sensory description
- How to capture inspiring phrases for later reference
- Tips for taming your inner critic
- How to gain inspiration by reading like a writer
This book will change the way you think about description. Order your copy now and transform your stories into magic carpets that carry readers into your world.”
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Sandra was raised in Montreal, Québec, and graduated from McGill University. As a young girl, she loved reading the Nancy Drew mystery series and was determined to write her own stories one day. Her career choices didn’t exactly lead her along the “yellow brick road” to writing mystery novels—though working in a bank and experiencing a string of armed robberies did ingrain terrifying memories worthy of a story!
I’ve worked on over a hundred TV commercials, a dozen or so feature films, and am currently hosting the show “Mythbusters” on the Discovery channel. I’ve worked on Star Wars Episodes I and II, Space Cowboys, Galaxy Quest, Terminator III, the Matrix sequels, and A.I. among others. I’ve done R&D for toy companies, acted in commercials and films, and done props and sets for Coca-Cola, Dow Corning, Hershey’s, Lexus, and a host of New York and San Francisco theater companies. I’m also a sculptor, of mixed media assemblage, who’s had my work represented in over forty shows in San Francisco, New York and (of all places) Charleston, West Virginia.”
I used to correspond with a published author. Her writing advice was the best I have ever been given: “Every scene, every sentence, every word, must drive the plot forward. If it doesn’t move the plot or reveal something important about the characters, cut it. If you can cut it without impacting your novel, it’s just dead weight, dragging your story down.” It is not easy to do. Even with that advice in mind, there were “dead weight” scenes in my manuscript I didn’t want to cut. I tried to make excuses for them, but in the end, I had to admit they served no real purpose, no matter how much I liked them. This one of the things a good editor does for you: gently, but firmly forces you to see where you’ve gone off-track.
Some of these lessons I learned only in retrospect, but writing is a lifelong journey. I can’t regret my mistakes, because they were valuable lessons. “We’re all apprentices in a craft where none is truly a master,” as the saying goes. I cannot wait to see what I will learn next.
At 49 I felt compelled to write a book. Not something I’d always wanted to do. I figured maybe it was just time to finally record all those stories about my ancestors who had been in South Africa since the 1800s, as well as my own stories about growing up in a small Zambian copper mining town; plus a two-year stint on a sisal plantation in Zimbabwe. This was before the two countries were independent, when colonial power held sway, when the bush was full of animals. And then there were all those road trips my family took to the Congo, Malawi, Kenya and Tanzania. The time an elephant chased our car for over five miles, forcing my dad to reverse down an excuse for a dirt road before the elephant gave up. The time we spent in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro with a crazy Belgian who kept wild animals for film-makers’ use; as well as that episode in Kenya when the 
I immersed myself in the past and all those feelings I had suppressed. The white girl became more vulnerable, a little less reactive and rebellious; her mother more loving and sympathetic than my own distant mother had ever been; the father more fallible than I’d always believed my own father to be. Overall every character grew, including Africa, a country with which I’ve always had a love-hate relationship. In the end, what I managed to produce was a fully realized coming-of-age story. Both for the protagonists, but especially for me. Through the power of words, I had set down roots in time and explored my own personal myths, uncovered their purpose and grounded myself in a way I might not have been able to do otherwise.
For the past three years, I have been writing my memoir. It’s actually been more like going to graduate school – learning the craft, practicing, toughening my skin for critique and rejection. Not all a walk in the park.
I see stories everywhere. 
This year has galloped by with a speed which has left me wondering what happened! So I am on a well-deserved holiday in which time, this blog will be quieter. I will be back on January 2nd. In the meantime, all blog comments are off so that the spam overlords get a holiday too. It’s the least I can do…
An Essential Reminder: John Cleese on Creativity
~ What is Steampunk? ~
I have a board on Pinterest which has pins of genuine Victorian inventions, Steampunk clothes, technology which has been given the Steampunk treatment and many other ideas along the theme’s lines. 
~ Inspiration Sources ~
In her book, Recovering, May Sarton chronicles her battles with depression and cancer. Anais Nin used her journals to write to her deranged father who left the family when she was young. In Nin’s case, her journal entries became a springboard for a four-volume collection of her journals. The memoirist, Mimi Schwartz is another writer who used her journals as a springboard. I’ve heard Mimi speak at a number of writing conferences and she shares her story of having written an essay for Lear’s Magazine about her experience with breast cancer. “Journal writing,” she says, “and the process of turning it into a public account—made all the difference for me in recovering quickly, emotionally and physically. It gave me a double set of survival goals: health and telling the story.” As a matter of fact, her journal notes inspired her to go from being an English professor to being a narrative writer.
Some years ago, at an Associated Writing Conference, Dr. James Pennebaker, the author of Writing to Heal said, “Writing dissolves some of the barriers between you and others. If you write, it’s easier to communicate with others.” Pennebaker believes that there’s a certain type of writing that erupts when we’re faced with loss, death, abuse, depression and trauma. He does have one rule that he calls, “the flip out rule,” which proclaims that if you get too upset when writing, then simply stop.
Some journaling tips
Since childhood, Diana has been fascinated with the written word. As an only child of working parents, she spent lots of time alone, which she filled with reading a great deal of books and filling the pages of many journals. That’s how she liked to keep busy. She always expressed herself better on the page. Today, Diana is a poet, memoirist and essayist and teaches at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. She frequently writes and lectures on the healing powers journaling and poetry.
