Comments on: Novel Writing: An Interview with Evan Marshall

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Mon, 11 May 2009 15:24:46 +0000

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By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:33:49 +0000

I find there is no “right” time to write – as Hemingway said: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” I’ve just set aside a period each day when I open up Word and write something – it can be a page, a couple sentences, or rewriting what I wrote yesterday – but it has become a routine I follow whether the muse is with me, or not.

By: Jennifer Mattern

Jennifer Mattern — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:13:18 +0000

I agree. While I can move from a blog post to a feature article to a 100 page e-book, writing a novel still strikes me as a completely daunting task. That’s why I played with various outline methods to begin with – to force me to move towards some kind of finished product. I still struggle with that novel draft, and it’s been idle for a little while now. I find that I tend to have a lot of short bursts of time available, but rarely a good stretch, and I make the mistake he talked about in the interview – I wait for it. In my mind when I have time to write 200-500 words, I’m more likely to think “Oh, I can squeeze in a blog post on one of my sites” than “I could knock out another small chunk of the novel.” I’ll need to work on changing how I think about those fragmented days if I want to get more productive with the project (which as per my sidebar notes here is still stuck at a “whopping” 11k or so words). :( Consider the interview a kick in the pants. ;)

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:56:49 +0000

Interesting bits of information for those freelancers (such as myself) contemplating writing a book. The best take-away was Marshall sees it easy to shift from one format (magazine, blog, books) to another. Too often, people get stuck in just one “gear.” Having a 5-speed gearbox makes the drive so much smoother.