Jennifer Weiner dishes out writers advice

So you want to be a novelist?
Well, there's no one path to take. Novelists come in all shapes and sizes. They're men and women, wunderkinds and retirees. Some of them are very attractive. The rest of us resent them horribly. And if there was a single magic bullet, or a list of steps to follow that would guarantee publication, believe me, someone would have published it by now. What follows is just my take on the question - a completely idiosyncratic, opinionated, flawed and somewhat sassy take on some of the steps you can take to get published. Important caveat: I have only written two books, and I'm thirty-two, which, as my mother would hasten to point out, means I am probably not qualified to give advice to anyone about anything. If you're looking for lessons from the life masters - people who've made long careers in the world of fiction - then run, do not walk, to your local bookshop and buy Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's utterly indispensable Bird by Bird, and Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings and Ursula LeGuin's Steering the Craft.If you want my advice, read on (and if you've already written your book and just want to figure out how to get it published, skip ahead to Step 8).

Beyond Words

is a great photography bookshop and on Thursday 2nd June Joe Cornish is launching his new book .6.30pm Stills Gallery (Free)

quick links

For a laugh Huhcorp - though one of my friends says 'I work for them!'

I confessed to some friends that I'd never been to a concert by any kind of 'popular beat combo' so they took pity on me and invited me to the Rush Festival at the Roxy (aka Lady Genorchy's church - though why she had to have her own church was unclear....). I had a great time and learned about Out of the Bedroom a great idea which is an open mike event at the Waverly Pub on Thursdays encouraging people to take their music out in public. I was also really pleased when I spoke to one friend whose taking guitar lessons and I asked him why and he said that he realised that it was time to stop passively consuming music and become a music maker. He did a very good evening class over the winter through Edinburgh Council but realised that over the summer he didn't practice with as much intensity so he invested in private lessons. This is a good tip to keep you on track with any kind of creative endevour. If you have to check in with your from with a class then you keep up all the associated practice much easier than if you have no structure to hang it around.

Busy weekend

Unfortuantly the two exhibitions were on their last day. However the second was on Steven McCurray the photojournalist/photographer who has an offical site and there is an interview in the National Geographic.

If you are near London until August then do go and see the sculptures made from decomissioned weapons as part of Africa05 at the British Museum.

Sally Jean

Utterly charming jewellery via Ali Edwards

Could you hop over to

Michael and leave a get well message - as he's feeling poorly.

Let the children

run Saachi & Saachi

Stitch & Bitch Thursday 7.30pm Cameo Bar

Home St Edinburgh. Probably will be a small number due to one of our regulars being in the US.

10 ways to get the creative juices flowing

from Artsy Fartsy Blog

the girl and the silver screen

I went to see Mysterious Skin last night.

You have to go outside to see the rainbow

and I did yesterday walking back from the supermarket.

I had a great trip to London but I find it too easy to slip into rut. I went to the library last week to do a spot of research and on the way up to the Fine Art library saw both a exhibition on Miffy and another on artist books.

I also picked up leafets on an exhibition about Ian Hamilton Finlay at the National Library of Scotland which I had no idea was on.

A leaflet on the Scottish Basket Makers Circle !

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

Yesterday I had a scone and coffee at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery cafe (their scones are magnificent) and went around an exhibit of new acquisitions including phographs of China in the early part of the 20th centuary. The tutor to the last Emperor of China was Scottish or had many Scottish connections.

boat sign - Pittenweem Fife

go here

reconstructed mind

A little tidying up on the website

At last I'm adding links. I spent ages debating whether to have them in categories but that got difficult when some websites don't fall into easily defined ones. Happy browsing! I'll keep adding as they come to me.

I've got a great idea....

Lee Goldberg's writing blog has a few tart things to say.

Support for new writing

article in the Guardian

hours of fun

at least 15 mins...

From the editor of Lenswork

Advice to photographers

Never forget that all the great photographs in history were made with more primitive camera equipment than you currently own.

Ultimately, your real work is to connect your Self to the world.

Think clearly about your objectives. Which is more important to you: earning an income or getting your work distributed? Which do you care about more: making images the public loves or making images that you must? If you are lucky, these are the same, but if they are not, clearly knowing which is more important to you makes everything else easier. There are no right answers here. There is only confusion when you work at cross-purposes to your objectives.
Learn to work alone. Learn to work without distractions. Turn off the music. Surround yourself with silence. Each one of us has a muse within us who tries to communicate and advise us on the creative path. There are no exceptions to this. But there is also a universality that all muses tend to whisper. To hear them clearly one must reside in a very still place.

Finish it... There is a universal Law of Audience that says if you finish work, the universe cannot stand that it remains unseen.

Shoot more than you do; print more than you do; and be a ruthless editor. I'm serious. There is a great deal to be gained in sheer volume - not that volume itself is any virtue, but practice is. Besides, relentless practice does have a twin sister known as luck.

Art is supposed to have meaning, emotion, power, or magic. Don't merely show what the subject is; show what it isn't, show what it means, show why it is, how it is, for whom it is, where it is, and/or when it is.

Remember art is not about artwork. Art is about life. To become a better artist, first and foremost become a better person - not in the moral sense, but rather in the complete sense. Remember that the greatest artist is not the one with the best technique, but the one with the most human heart.

Via Crossroads Dispatches

Lenswork

"You know how sometimes you're in bed, and you get an idea, and you have to decide whether to get up and write it down? Writing a novel is a lot like getting out of bed a hundred million times. I want to be someone who doesn't lose things. Writing is less about creating things than keeping them."

Jonathan Safran Soer from Swirly Girl

All things creative

you can follow Esther's journey to sell her hand made soap