The Economy of Words

I just attended a two hour session with author and poet Mary Karr, put on by Lighthouse Writers Workshop. I enjoyed it immensely. I have three of Karr’s books (The Liar’s Club, Cherry, and Lit)—all memoirs. I was very interested to hear about the author’s writing process. She talked about the number of rewrites she did with Lit. After going through about 15 revisions, Karr sent it to her editor and had to cut even more material. Published, Lit is 386 pages long. During the editing/revision process, Karr said about 2000 pages were eliminated from the book. I think this is an example of the hard work that is involved in polishing one’s writing. An author can’t go with a first draft or a second or a third; instead, it is a long, arduous process to mold the book into a final product. Karr says that, in the end, her writing is a finely hewed product. Poetry has helped her to learn the economy of words.

Putting on the Brakes to Maintain Balance

I used to keep a diary in a spiral notebook that was tucked under my bed. Every night I propped myself up on my pillows, climbed under the covers, and began a dialog with myself. It was good therapy, especially when I was going through difficult times. Writing provided an acceptable outlet for airing my innermost feelings. With each stroke of the pen, my thoughts became more clear, and I was always surprised by how much I had to say once I began. After going on for quite some time, I would suddenly realize that it was well past the time that I had intended to turn off the light. Over a few years, I managed to fill up a good sized box with my journals. Presently, the box lies sealed in my basement. Perhaps one day, I will feel comfortable incorporating those thoughts into something I publish, though my ramblings may have to appear as fiction.

I write in spurts and often hesitate to start the process because everything else becomes less important. Beginning this blog was an effort to incorporate some self-discipline into my current writing process. My aim this time is to write on a regular basis, but to limit the time that I spend on it each day. Hopefully, by chronicling the process, I will become accountable to myself and to my followers about my progress.

Presently I am writing one to three hours a day. I am making steady progress with my current project, but still struggle with creating the best balance. There are so many things in life that I want to do and need to do, it is difficult to find the time for everything. I cannot let the writing take over.

How I Wrote My First Book

I am always interested to learn the habits of other writers and how they organize their time and content. Presently I am wrestling with ideas for good systems as I write a couple of new books. The same organizational system will not work for all types of writing.

I can tell you how I created my first book, Raising a Gifted Child: A Parenting Success Handbook. I took the content from the first three years of “Prufrock’s Gifted Child Information Blog,” reorganized it according to chapter topics, and wove it together with narrative. I found it very difficult to organize all this material on the computer. Sometimes I printed out sections so that I could “see” it better.

A fellow writer friend gave me a helpful tip. She told me to create a separate document for each chapter. Doing that made the manuscript easier to manage.

When handling a document as large as a book, it is terrifying to think that it could all be swept away very quickly with the crash of one’s hard drive. I finally took my son’s suggestion to get an automatic backup system for my computer. The system I am using is mozy.com. Now my documents backup automatically on the cloud twice a day. It provides me with emotional security.

I have much larger quantities of content to organize for my current and future projects and will keep you updated as I figure out how to manage it all.

Give a Book to a Teacher

Tamara Fisher writes a very popular blog titled "Unwrapping the Gifted" for Education Week: Teacher. Today's blog entry, Gift a Teacher, presents a list of books that she feels would make good presents for teachers to help them better understand and address the needs of gifted students. I am pleased that my book, Raising a Gifted Child: A Parenting Success Handbook, was recommended as one that would make a good gift to teachers. As Tamara says, "Despite it's title, the book is an excellent resource for teachers, too." Thank you, Tamara.

The Discipline of Writing or “Just Do It!”

Many people tell me that they enjoy writing and they have great ideas, but they never put pen to paper. Or they may spend a couple of days or weeks at it and then give up. Writing is a solitary experience; therefore, it requires a lot of self-discipline. If you really want to write, you have to push on through the difficult parts and “Just do it!”
 

As much as I like to write, I often have trouble finding time. To be productive, I find that I have to discipline myself and commit to at least a couple of hours a day. No excuses allowed.
 

Decades ago I heard Joanne Greenberg (author of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden) speak. She said that she wrote every morning for at least one hour, 365 days a year. I couldn’t understand how she could publish all the books that she has authored by just writing as little as an hour a day. Now I realize that it is the consistency of that disciplined approach that allowed her to be so prolific. Interruptions were not permitted and she never wavered from the time committed.
 

Another writer may work all morning, five days a week for six months, then take the next six months off. There is no one way to accomplish the task of actually finishing a project, but one does need to come up with some sort of plan.
 

In the first entry of this blog, I listed several different types of writing that I want to pursue. Right now, I am seriously working on the first one. Every day, I spend a couple of hours going through all the blog entries I wrote for Prufrock’s Gifted Child Information Blog from March 2005 to August of this year, checking the Internet links, and determining what information is still current and what is out-dated. As soon as I finish that process, which is very tedious, I will begin rearranging the information into a form that is user friendly. I haven’t yet decided which approach I will take: a “Best Of” book, a series of articles, or a combination of the two. I think the best format will come to me as I start putting it all together.