I’m going to list five little writing resources that I’ve found to be useful over the last few months. Many of you have probably seen many of them, but I thought it would be useful to put them all in one place.
1. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Outstanding TEDtalk on John’s weblog. Elizabeth Gilbert talks about the creative process, suffering and her thoughts on a better way of dealing with both the successes and failures in writing. It’s funny, honest and you can tell that this is something she’s lived through.
2. Joss Whedon’s Top 10 Writing Tips. Buffy, Firefly, all that joy. It’s a quick list and I find myself going back to it for ideas on how to make changes or make something more interesting and approachable. Worth bookmarking for sure.
3. Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction. Ever try and write something while you’re connected to the Internet? Yeah, it’s basically impossible. He doesn’t suggest that you give up connectivity but offers up a bunch of different ways to mitigate the pain and turn it into an advantage. (Not that I use this – I do my best thinking + writing when I’m trapped on an airplane. But still.)
4. Eric Idle, on John Cleese’s Writing Process. A quick two minutes on writing with John Cleese. Funny, and somewhat useful. Specificity vs. big picture. A fun video that puts great pictures in your head of what it might be like to work with John Cleese. Mostly here just to spice things up a bit.
5. A Transom Interview with Ira Glass. (Also, part 2 and part 3.) If you made it this far into this post you’re probably willing to invest some time into reading through this interview. Ira Glass is one of the main forces behind This American Life which includes some of the best story telling I’ve heard in my young life. And it’s the best of this small lot of resources. Ira talks about learning how to create radio shows, finding the heart of stories, learning from other people and also what not to do. These are long and include some great audio samples and is worth your time to go through it. Lots of good thought and inspiration here.
Enjoy!
