I recently posted that I started a new (terrifying) project – writing a novel and getting it published with Creator Institute and their publishing partner, New Degree Press. The classes have started and one of the bonuses of the program are the Speaker Series.
This past Wednesday, we shared a Zoom screen with Daniel Handler, author of the Lemony Snickets series and a lot more. He shared his writing experiences with us and how his complicated, multi-step, yet portable, writing process works. It includes notebooks, index cards, dining room table territory battles, typed summaries and more!
I learned one way to start writing good characters is to think of an event in your plot and ask yourself, what kind of person would do that? If you’ve read his books or watched the TV series or movie, you’d know exactly what he means there! He also said that being lonely is a great place for a writer to be – it’s where you do your best work. And there are a lot of us out there, lonely and writing books, now that we’re basically shut ins.
But the one statement that really resonated with me was him saying, “The history of [literature] is filled with just people writing things down.” So, I’m going to be one of those people writing things down. And I may or may not incorporate a note pad or index cards. But probably not.
Writing a book should be a piece of cake, right?
I’ll be sharing more of my book journey later, but here’s a photo of some of us who were there for the call (the computer I was using didn’t have a camera – fail!).
