I have been engaged in "laying track" across the vast continent that is Askar's sequel. Laying track is the term Julia Cameron uses for writing flat out, getting it all down, worrying about the niceties of craft later. It is a good way to think when addressing the vast blank page or, these days, the vast blank screen. It is the step between inspiration and art, the bit where a writer actually has to work. In the process inspiration can flourish.
Julia Cameron is a creativity guru who addresses most of her books to artists in general, but she is a writer by profession and so her books tend to have that slant. Books written directly for writers are The Right to Write and The Sound of Paper. Her most famous books are more generally on the topic of creativity - The Artist's Way and its sequels. These books do not so much teach you how to write as teach you how to be a writer - how to free yourself up to express your unique voice, how to overcome psychological obstacles to creativity and how to "blast through blocks".
Anyone who aspires to writing should be at least curious about how great writers approach their profession - I have read books by Ursula le Guin, Orson Scott Card and Jerome Stern on the topic. In New Zealand I think Joan Rosier-Jones book So You Want to Write is hard to beat for practical how-to advice (her character building exercises are great). Sarah Quigley's Write: A 30 day Guide to Creative Writing is great for finding inspiration. Celebrated Australian writer Kate Grenville has contributed The Writing Book, which, among other things, shows the development of one of her stories which she went on to publish.
There are great classics in the genre, my favourite of these is Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. It was published in 1934. Brande addresses the distinct characteristics that make a writer, the sheer need for will power and focus, the daily practice of putting words on paper. Some of her advice is quaint (it is 75 years old!), but mostly it's sound common sense (and some truly great writers have found her advice the best of all).
But I think Julia Cameron is my favourite because she has recognised that creativity is essentially a spiritual exercise. It is a process of tapping into "something" that is larger than ourselves. But her spirituality and mine don't exactly match, so I'm going to turn to my favourite writer (CS Lewis) for a quote about originality and creativity, possibly explaining why in this post modern age "Art" has degenerated so much:
"Applying this principle to literature [our whole destiny to become mirrors filled with the image of a face not ours] we should get as the basis of all critical theory the maxim that an author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom." (from "Christianity and Literature" in Christian Reflections first published in 1967).
Anyone who aspires to writing should be at least curious about how great writers approach their profession - I have read books by Ursula le Guin, Orson Scott Card and Jerome Stern on the topic. In New Zealand I think Joan Rosier-Jones book So You Want to Write is hard to beat for practical how-to advice (her character building exercises are great). Sarah Quigley's Write: A 30 day Guide to Creative Writing is great for finding inspiration. Celebrated Australian writer Kate Grenville has contributed The Writing Book, which, among other things, shows the development of one of her stories which she went on to publish.
There are great classics in the genre, my favourite of these is Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. It was published in 1934. Brande addresses the distinct characteristics that make a writer, the sheer need for will power and focus, the daily practice of putting words on paper. Some of her advice is quaint (it is 75 years old!), but mostly it's sound common sense (and some truly great writers have found her advice the best of all).
But I think Julia Cameron is my favourite because she has recognised that creativity is essentially a spiritual exercise. It is a process of tapping into "something" that is larger than ourselves. But her spirituality and mine don't exactly match, so I'm going to turn to my favourite writer (CS Lewis) for a quote about originality and creativity, possibly explaining why in this post modern age "Art" has degenerated so much:
"Applying this principle to literature [our whole destiny to become mirrors filled with the image of a face not ours] we should get as the basis of all critical theory the maxim that an author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom." (from "Christianity and Literature" in Christian Reflections first published in 1967).
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