Thord D. Hedengren

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Tag: Thoughts On Writing

  • Inspiration

    I’ve got 2 minutes so let’s keep this short and sweet.

    Inspiration is difficult. It is not something you just find, or that you induce in a certain kind of situation. It is not dependent on a muse or any other mythological creature. It is not even about experience, or about a greater good of any kind.

    Inspiration is about hard work.

    You open up your computer, pick up your pen, press play on your recorder, and then you create something.

    The harsh truth is that anyone can do this, at any time. Everything else is just your disillusioned self trying to make what you do more important, and trying to protect you from being hurt yet again when reality hits you.

    Because, you know, not everything anyone does is great, or even good enough. Don’t blame that on inspiration, just pick yourself off the floor and try again.

    Now that’s inspiring.

  • Writing For A Living

    I’ve been writing for a living at times. As I’m writing this, I’m splitting my time between various types of writing, and running the Odd Alice web agency. While I doubt I will split my time like this in the future, it suits me right now.

    A few years back my salary was paid by various writing gigs. I’ve been the freelance writer so many times I have long since stopped collecting clippings, and to my publishers’ dismay I often wouldn’t even tweet my work. It’s not that I don’t care, I do, but rather it had become normal. When you deliver 20 shorter pieces, whether it is blog posts or niche news, a few columns, and a couple of longer articles each month you tend to forget how awesome it is. At least I did, and sometimes still do.

    Writing for a living isn’t too hard, actually. It all depends on what you want to do, and how expensive you are for the publishers. I started out being pretty cheap actually, but I had the luxury of being enthusiastic and the US$ was fairly strong against the Swedish currency. I was also a very productive person, working at a high pace, still do. As I built my personal brand I also charged more for my work.

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  • Managing Friends And Family

    A writer writes. Chances are you could do with some more hours in front of the screen, and I’m not talking about rotting away on Facebook. Finding the time to write, and then actually sit down and do it, is hard, even if we set aside the perils of the craft.

    Writing really is hard enough as it is.

    Hopefully you have plenty of friends and a great family. Maybe you’ve got kids, pets, or a wife or husband that you share your castle with. That’s great, but they are all Enemies of Writing. You see, your everyday life will invade on your writing. People will ask you for help, dogs need walking, kids want to play, adults want to play, online friends want to chat, and so on. Every time this happens when you’re writing you’ll be in a fix.

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  • Characters

    I don’t have too much to say about characters actually. They all differ, they are all crucial to your story, and they are all carrying something of yourself.

    That’s right, I subscribe to the idea that there is a little bit of the author in every character. Yes, even the murderer, and yes, even the politician. We are all.

    Characters build over time. Some are planned in advance, perhaps the reason a story unfolds in the first place, whereas others are born during the outlining phase. Main characters usually pop up in your mind before you start writing since they’re probably pushing your story forward, but support characters are sometimes invented while writing. I see no problem with this, other than that unplanned characters are often introduced with just one purpose: To move the story forward. That’s not wrong by itself of course, but even small characters need to be believable, otherwise you’ll risk breaking the reader’s spell.

    A good character is believable. A bad one isn’t.

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  • Outlining

    If you’ve ever read a site or book about how to write a novel (or anything longer than a couple of paragraphs), you’ll have been told to outline.

    So what is an outline?

    You know, that depends on who you ask. It could be a simple disposition with chapter titles and a few sub-headings, or it is a crazy deep index card system that basically tells the whole story. None of those are wrong, nor is whatever method of outlining you might be subscribing to.

    There are no rules for how you are supposed to write a book.

    Again: There really are no rules.

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  • Discipline

    Writing isn’t about getting hit in the head by inspiration. It isn’t about finding your muse, and it isn’t about living the glamourus life of the always suffering and slightly alcoholic writer. Although it can probably be for some, in which case I think you should skip this text as it will only make you sad and shatter your illusions.

    Writing is about discipline.

    If you want to be a writer you need to write. Excuses won’t get you anywhere with writing. So when you put off writing for a day because you’re not feeling inspired, you’re basically fooling yourself. Sure, some days the words come easier than others, but deadlines wait for no man, and writers write.

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  • NaNoWriMo

    It is day two of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as the cool kids like to say, and I’m on track. The concept behind NaNoWriMo is to write a book in a month, a fairly short one clocking in at 50,000 words. That’s 1,667 words per day in November, something I managed just before midnight yesterday by the way.

    There’s a lot more written about NaNoWriMo on the official site, so I urge you to read up if you like.

    NaNoWriMo is a good idea, I like it. It encourages people to write, which is always a good thing. So it is all good then, right?

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  • Introduction To My NaNoWriMo

    November isn’t just about growing a mustache for cancer awareness, it is also the National Novel Writing Month, more commonly known as NaNoWriMo. This got me thinking, something I usually do best when my slate is full (and it is quite full right now). I’ve been thinking about writing a little bit about the art/craft/madness of writing.

    So I sat down and wrote down the titles of some possible articles. It ended up being quite a list, and I’m pretty sure it will grow a bit as I start writing. This is something I intend to do by the way, unless you hadn’t figured that out yet.

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  • The blank screen

    The blank screen. Just the cursor blinking, mocking you. Painful, oh so painful, and yet full of potential. That’s what makes it so hard to start filling the screen with words, sentences, and things that make at least some sense. Things that are worthy of publication, of sharing, and of your reader’s time.

    The blank screen scares me. It didn’t use to though, and I wonder if I ever will feel the same amount of confidence and possibilities as I did as a teen. It’s a shame that same confidence didn’t adhere to all parts of my teenage years, but I’m happy for what I got. (more…)