HodgePodgin' and Mishmashin'

May 10, 2013 with 51 notes

amandaonwriting:

Literary Birthday - 10 May
Happy Birthday, Barbara Taylor Bradford, born 10 May 1933
10 Quotes On Writing
First and foremost, you need to be serious about your desire to become a published author. It takes an extraordinary amount of time, effort and dedication to hone your skills and produce a work worthy of publication. But like anything else, if you possess the talent and the determination, you will likely succeed.
You sit in a room and work hard. Somebody once said to me, and I have never forgotten it, that you can’t be a social butterfly and a bestselling novelist. That is right.
I find plot ideas just by keeping my eyes open. One day, I saw this blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman walking somewhere, and I started thinking about what her story was and what her problems were.
I think women like to read about other women who succeed.
You must use your imagination. You can go to school to learn grammar and write prose, but no one can teach you creativity.
I usually take a year, sometimes longer, to write a novel. When I am actually writing the book I work seven days a week. Fortunately, I am an early riser, and I get up around 5a.m. I am usually at my desk by 5:30. I take a short break at noon for a snack, and then continue working until 4p.m.
Of course when I am in my office at home I am not always writing. Sometimes I am editing, doing research, re-writing, or thinking. The latter takes most of my time.
You need to give your characters baggage and a past. Create an outline before you write and when you have a few chapters done, ask all your friends and family members if they have any friends in book publishing. The second step to publishing a novel is finding an agent, which can be difficult, but put your feelers out there. Mention that you’re writing a book to every person you meet. Someone is bound to have a contact who can help you. But the main thing, if you want to be a writer, is to just sit down and start writing.
I know people say I write about women who are rich, but that is not really true. I write about women who become successful.
‘When people say: “I want to write a novel and be rich and famous like you”, I say: “Well, you’re not going to be.” I say it to shock them. That is the wrong motivation. You should want to do the work so much that nothing else matters.
Barbara Taylor Bradford is a best-selling English novelist. Her debut novel, A Woman of Substance, was published in 1979 and has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. It is one of the top-ten bestselling novels of all time. She has written 27 novels.
Source for Image
by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write

Literary Birthday - 10 May

Happy Birthday, Barbara Taylor Bradford, born 10 May 1933

10 Quotes On Writing

First and foremost, you need to be serious about your desire to become a published author. It takes an extraordinary amount of time, effort and dedication to hone your skills and produce a work worthy of publication. But like anything else, if you possess the talent and the determination, you will likely succeed.

You sit in a room and work hard. Somebody once said to me, and I have never forgotten it, that you can’t be a social butterfly and a bestselling novelist. That is right.

I find plot ideas just by keeping my eyes open. One day, I saw this blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman walking somewhere, and I started thinking about what her story was and what her problems were.

I think women like to read about other women who succeed.

You must use your imagination. You can go to school to learn grammar and write prose, but no one can teach you creativity.

I usually take a year, sometimes longer, to write a novel. When I am actually writing the book I work seven days a week. Fortunately, I am an early riser, and I get up around 5a.m. I am usually at my desk by 5:30. I take a short break at noon for a snack, and then continue working until 4p.m.

Of course when I am in my office at home I am not always writing. Sometimes I am editing, doing research, re-writing, or thinking. The latter takes most of my time.

You need to give your characters baggage and a past. Create an outline before you write and when you have a few chapters done, ask all your friends and family members if they have any friends in book publishing. The second step to publishing a novel is finding an agent, which can be difficult, but put your feelers out there. Mention that you’re writing a book to every person you meet. Someone is bound to have a contact who can help you. But the main thing, if you want to be a writer, is to just sit down and start writing.

I know people say I write about women who are rich, but that is not really true. I write about women who become successful.

‘When people say: “I want to write a novel and be rich and famous like you”, I say: “Well, you’re not going to be.” I say it to shock them. That is the wrong motivation. You should want to do the work so much that nothing else matters.

Barbara Taylor Bradford is a best-selling English novelist. Her debut novel, A Woman of Substance, was published in 1979 and has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. It is one of the top-ten bestselling novels of all time. She has written 27 novels.

Source for Image

by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write

May 6, 2013 with 4 notes

tags: lilli palmer.

(Source: lillipalmer)

April 19, 2013 with 44 notes

oddlyunorthodox:

These two ❤

(via goodheavensemelia)

April 19, 2013 with 187 notes

Lovecraft's 20 most common mistakes of young authors

amandaonwriting:

Lovecraft enumerates the twenty most common mistakes of young authors, “aside from those gross violations of syntax which ordinary education corrects,” and offers a common cure for all:

Erroneous plurals of nouns, as vallies or echos.

Barbarous compound nouns, as viewpoint or upkeep.

Want of correspondence in number between noun and verb where the two are widely separated or the construction involved.

Ambiguous use of pronouns.

Erroneous case of pronouns, as whom for who, and vice versa, or phrases like “between you and I,” or “Let we who are loyal, act promptly.”

Erroneous use of shall and will, and of other auxiliary verbs.

Use of intransitive for transitive verbs, as “hewas graduated from college,” or vice versa, as “he ingratiated with the tyrant.”

Use of nouns for verbs, as “he motored to Boston,” or “he voiced a protest.”

Errors in moods and tenses of verbs, as “If Iwas he, I should do otherwise,” or “He said the earth was round.”

The split infinitive, as “to calmly glide.”

The erroneous perfect infinitive, as “Last week I expected to have met you.”

False verb-forms, as “I pled with him.”

Use of like for as, as “I strive to write likePope wrote.”

Misuse of prepositions, as “The gift was bestowed to an unworthy object,” or “The gold was divided between the five men.”

The superfluous conjunction, as “I wish for you to do this.”

Use of words in wrong senses, as “The book greatly intrigued me,” “Leave me take this,” “He was obsessed with the idea,” or “He is ameticulous writer.”

Erroneous use of non-Anglicised foreign forms, as “a strange phenomena,” or “two stratas of clouds.”

Use of false or unauthorized words, asburglarize or supremest.

Errors of taste, including vulgarisms, pompousness, repetition, vagueness, ambiguousness, colloquialism, bathos, bombast, pleonasm, tautology, harshness, mixed metaphor, and every sort of rhetorical awkwardness.

Errors of spelling and punctuation, and confusion of forms such as that which leads many to place an apostrophe in the possessive pronoun its.

Of all blunders, there is hardly one which might not be avoided through diligent study of simple textbooks on grammar and rhetoric, intelligent perusal of the best authors, and care and forethought in composition. Almost no excuse exists for their persistent occurrence, since the sources of correction are so numerous and so available.’