Creative Writing and the Internet

I have always been a pen-and-paper kind of guy when it comes to my poetry and occasional prose. However, it would be very naïve to think that the Internet has not had a profound impact on writing. Additionally, it would be foolish for any writer to discredit the Internet as a valuable resource for development and success.

That's right: Resistance is futile.

For those of us looking for feedback and exposure for our writing, we have something to benefit from using the Internet. In this article, I will focus on the basics behind the two most important Internet tools out there for writers: Blogging and Social Networking. Since there are so many other valuable uses for the Internet, I will be focusing on topics such as self-publishing in future articles.

Blogging

Blogging has been around for a little while now. Blogging allows you to create your own web space in which you can post writing and thoughts to anyone else online. Some of the well-known blog websites around are Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress, although many others exist. The reason blogging is so valuable to writers is that you can both solicit feedback on your writing as well as gain a following simply by becoming an active part of the blogging community.

My suggested simple approach to blogging is to:

1. Join a blog site (Blogger.com, Tumblr.com, WordPress.com, etc.).

2. Design your blog. This just means filling out whatever information you want anyone who visits your blog to see as well as selecting a visual template that suits you.

3. Interact with other bloggers! Find other blogs that interest you and make meaningful comments.

4. Upload your own writing or thoughts to your blog and solicit feedback from others. Thank those who follow you and those who comment on your posts.

Once you get the hang of blogging, you will start figuring out how blogging works for you. That being said, the one piece of advice I can give from many, many years of blogging is that you should always be genuine. It is more than obvious when someone involved in a discussion is simply trying to promote his or her own work. Being genuine is essential to maintaining credibility.

Social Networking

Social networking is a little newer than blogging. Most people will agree that there are two giants in social networking: Facebook and Twitter.

Started only seven years ago, Facebook has amassed over 500 million users. Facebook allows you to interact with friends, family, and other Facebook users. It also offers quite a lot of potential exposure for your writing! It allows you to post updates on current writings, blog posts, and any other thoughts you wish to share. Other people can "Like" your Facebook page and you can amass quite a following.

My suggested simple approach to setting up a Facebook page is to:

1. Sign up for Facebook under the Artist, Band, or Public Figure Category. As opposed to a regular Facebook account, this will allow other users to "Like" your page.

2. Upload a picture of yourself, include a short description, and link to any other websites you have (hopefully a blog!).

3. Post useful and entertaining links as well as updates about your own writings. I suggest posting an update somewhere between once a day and once a week. More than once a day will overload your subscribers, however you don't want to post so infrequently that they forget about you.

4. Link to your Facebook page from your blog and any other websites you have.

5. Interact! Along the same vein as blogging, find Facebook pages of other users and comments. Again, be genuine and do not constantly self-promote.

You will also want to sign up for a Twitter account. Twitter allows you to interact with others in short (140 character-or-less) messages. This character limitation can be surprisingly entertaining, and often leads to enjoyable quips, quotes, and advice.

Creative Writing for Online Publishing

If you are good at writing and have a basic command over English, then you can easily get started with creative writing and publish articles online. Online publishing is an effective way to market your creative skills and it does not cost you much too. You can gain expertise in writing and publishing while at the same time make it interesting for your readers, too.

You can start first by choosing a topic and do sufficient research on the topic and gather subject matter for writing. The next task would be to structure the entire article, for structuring is very important for the flow of information.

A neatly structured article makes it easy and interesting for the readers to read through and remember. Therefore structuring of the article in organized way is important. You can start with introduction paragraph, carry the readers through the discussion and end it with a concluding paragraph.

You can structure the entire content into small paragraphs and number them as key point. An article can start with three points and go up to a max of ten to twelve points. While some people prefer having even numbered points, many are found to like odd numbers too. It really doesn't matter as long as the reader is able to grasp all the points and remember them easily.

You ask any reader, they will tell you that most of them do not read through the entire article, unless something holds their attention. They just go through the introduction paragraph, scan through the rest of the content and read the concluding paragraph. If you structure your article with points, it holds the attention of the readers and they are likely to go through in detail as well as remember the points you have made.

Introduce each point with a short subtitle that stands as the essence of the point. Following this you can structure your content into t a crisp, short paragraph. Number them to make it look neat.

Use catchy and attractive sub titles to be able to hold the attention of the reader. Readers while going through the article will read through the paragraph only if they find the title interesting or else are likely to skip the same and go on to the rest of the page.

Always ensure your articles are structured neatly and follow a logical pattern so that the reader is able to understand what you are trying to say and is able to follow you through. With above guidelines you will be able to improve your writing skills.

Creative Writing: The Importance of Seeking Feedback

Writing can be a very isolating hobby, or job for a few lucky individuals out there. This is particularly true when it comes to creative writing. When you embark upon a creative writing project you find that almost all of your time is taken up with thinking about the characters, the places and the plot line and sub plots of your story. You build up a world that is entirely plausible to you, and that hopefully once it is on paper it will become fully plausible to others too. But initially, when you are still drafting your novel and creating your characters and the world that they live in, you are the only person around you who is 'living' in this newly created world. Only you can see it, only you know the characters within it, and so you find that you don't really have anyone to discuss this world with or bounce ideas off of.

Fast forward several weeks, months or sometimes even years and you find yourself sitting in front of your computer with an entire manuscript completed. You have reached that all important milestone; you've finished your book! You think it's brilliant (well you must be happy with it by now otherwise you wouldn't be thinking of it as 'finished') and you are ready to get it out there in the public domain - you want it published.

Before you rush out to buy copious amounts of paper and ink to get your synopsis and sample chapters printed however, it is worth stepping back and considering getting some external feedback on your manuscript. After all, you think it is a great read, but then you have been working with these characters and the book location for a while now. How do you know what other people will think of the book? How do you know if there aren't small amendments that you could make to the novel that would enhance the storyline or characters dramatically? This information can only be found out if you seek feedback from other people before you submit your manuscript to literary agents or publishers. By seeking feedback from others, you are giving yourself a chance to make amendments to your manuscript that could mark the difference between your manuscript being accepted by a publisher or literary agent or being rejected.

External feedback can be sought in a number of ways:

- From friends and family

- Via a professional writer or editor

- Via a manuscript editorial service

- From discussion at writer groups

- By sharing your manuscript with others involved in writing, and / or publishing

It can feel a little embarrassing or awkward to share your manuscript with others, after all it is very precious to you and don't want to hear any feedback that could be thought of as 'negative', and there is always a certain amount of vulnerability involved in letting others into this world that you have spent so long creating. If you feel very self conscious about getting your work read by others, then it is perhaps better to ask a professional editor or manuscript editorial service to review your work, as you will be anonymous to them, and visa versa. Whichever route you choose, try to keep in mind that if you want your book to be published then ultimately it will be read by many, and so you will need to overcome this fear of sharing your work early on in the publication process, otherwise you'll find that it restricts the attainment of your ultimate goal.

How to Choose University Courses in Creative Writing

University courses in creative writing have become ever more common, in both the US and the UK. But are they worth it? Personally, I'm sceptical. I think most people who do such courses are let down by them. I think the teaching is often far too removed from the market, and the writers who graduate are often hopelessly underprepared for market realities.

In the first place, it's important to realise that agents and publishers couldn't care a damn about your academic qualifications. My degree is in economics. I spent ten years working as an investment banker. There was nothing in my history to suggest I had any talent at creative writing - and no one cared. There's only one aptitude test which matters and that's whether you can write a good book.

Yes, it is true that agents will tend to stay in close touch with various creative writing schools, watching for emerging talent. But so what? The most that'll do is ease your path into the industry. But if your book is good enough, and you're not a total numpty about finding agents, you'll secure representation anyway.

The killer question then is this: will university creative writing courses help you launch a career in writing? Or rather - because any course will teach you something - are those courses effective ways of teaching you what needs to be learned?

And that's where I have a problem. In particular, creative writing courses typically teach you how to write short stories and poetry and novels / novellas. You'll get better at all these things. But there's no market to speak of for short stories, or poetry, or novellas. If you actually want a career as a writer, they're irrelevant.

What's more, creative writing courses are typically excellent at teaching how to write prettily - because that's easily done in a classroom / workshop - but they're lacklustre at teaching plot and story. Those things are hard to handle, precisely because they're so big. You can't properly critique a plot without reading a whole damn book and working through it piece by piece. If the plot doesn't work, the book has to be rewritten - then re-read, re-analysed, re-evaluated. Because these things are time-consuming, plot is often woefully neglected.

Which is madness! Plot and story are by far the things that matter most to agents and publishers. Get the story wrong, and no matter how much else you do right, your work is probably unsaleable. Plot and story should be the main focus of any creative writing course worth its salt.

And then too, I think way too many MA / MFA courses are desperately unrealistic about what kind of work is saleable. I have never, for example, come across any such course which has been good at teaching genre fiction: crime, thrillers, chick lit, and the like. And that's bananas too! No, scratch that, not just bananas - it's snobbish and stupid.

Good genre fiction is quite simply damn good writing. It deserves proper teaching as much as anything else. One of my first editorial clients came to me after having completed a two year creative writing course at a highly respected university. He had written a thriller - clever, stylish, nasty, memorable. But it wasn't right. It spent too much energy on the style, too little on the thriller.

I helped that client out with a couple of editorial reviews. Quite simple stuff, actually. The writer had piles of talent and a great concept. The things that needed fixing were fairly obvious, fairly fixable. But why the heck was I providing that feedback? Why hadn't this guy's tutors already told him what he needed to know?

He said that they were all literary writers who didn't relate to what he wanted to do and had hardly ever read the full length manuscript. For my money, that's pathetic. Inexcusable. (Oh, and we got that writer a top quality agent within weeks of his having finished his final edit with us. That shows how badly his course failed him.)

And even if your interest is in writing literary fiction, I'm doubtful whether most courses will set you on the right track. Fifteen years ago, there was a market for the 'slim' literary novel. You got paid GBP5,000 / USD 5,000 for it. It sold 200 copies in hardback. It sold 3000 copies in paperback. It got some nice reviews. No one made any money. After two or three such novels, everyone agreed that enough was enough and the author's career drew to a close.

That just doesn't happen now - and shouldn't. Novels need to command an audience. The best debuts are loud, unforgettable, attention-seeking things: Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Audrey Niffenegger's Time Traveler's Wife, Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated. That's what agents are looking for. Those are the books that can launch a career. Those are the things that MA / MFA courses should be teaching.

Yet the tutors - at least 90% of them - have never written such a book themselves. They've written short stories, published poetry, sold slim literary novels of their own... and never engaged with the industry the way that most MA / MFA writers want to engage with it themselves.