Almost any word ending in -ly is an adverb. They modify/describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They "want" to be verbs but aren't. Poor little things.
Peruse these gorgeous examples:
abruptly; wickedly; lightly; delicately; wittingly; endlessly; eternally; vibrantly; firmly; fruitfully; wearily; smartly; fervently; vainly; financially; willfully; widely; importantly; cheerfully; weirdly; delicately; wrongfully; wholeheartedly; delightfully.
My most recent writing workshop was a lot like an intervention. Picture me, perched so uncomfortably in the hot seat while the assembled group of well intentioned so-and-so's lavished me with honest appraisals of the toll my words had taken on them. The consensus seemed to be that I am, indeed, an addict, an adverb addict.
Like any self protecting user, with my own needs and pleasures put first, I both deny and justify my habit. Adamantly.
Adverbs are lovely. Terribly important. Almost always useful. How can I ever get along without them? How?
Adverbs can tell four things: Manner (How was it done?), Place, Time, and Degree.
•'John smiled uneasily.' Uneasily shows the manner of how John smiled.
•'I eat dinner here'. Adverbs of place are often confused with nouns. 'Here' tells where he eats dinner.
•'I watered the plant yesterday'. Again, be careful not to confuse adverbs of time with nouns. 'Yesterday' tells when he watered the plant.
•'He is very mean'. 'Very' tells the degree of his meanness.
I feel very uneasy about the dislike for adverbs shown there. When I was a kid our English teachers taught us that adverbs made our writing more intersting. Even on Saturday mornings my cartoons were interjected with this little diddy that I can still sing;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7wnT8iiR8w
Now my writing teachers say adverbs make my writing less interesting. That I need to rehabilitate myself. Repent and reform. Golly, giving up things I love makes me cranky. Very cranky.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Writing tips from The Guardian
On Saturday The Guardian published a lengthy article with a great many authors giving their tips to all of us wannabees about howtobee. It is so lengthy I decided to pick my one favorite to share with you. That proved to be rather difficult, but I chose Margaret Atwood since I am a fan, and her tips made me smile. Some of them I actually do!
Margaret Atwood
1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.
2 If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type.
3 Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.
4 If you're using a computer, always safeguard new text with a memory stick.
5 Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.
6 Hold the reader's attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don't know who the reader is, so it's like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B.
7 You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.
8 You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.
9 Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.
10 Prayer might work. Or reading something else. Or a constant visualisation of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.
But then I couldn't resist including the words of Roddy Doyle, his advice so sensible;
Roddy Doyle
1 Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.
2 Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph –
3 Until you get to Page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety – it's the job.
4 Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.
5 Do restrict your browsing to a few websites a day. Don't go near the online bookies – unless it's research.
6 Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg "horse", "ran", "said".
7 Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It's research.
8 Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments.
9 Do not search amazon.co.uk for the book you haven't written yet.
10 Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – "He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego." But then get back to work.
Then I just couldn't exclude Helen Dunmore's advice, her closing words as eloquent a reason to write as I have ever heard, and what I want to remember.
Helen Dunmore
1 Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.
2 Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices.
3 Read Keats's letters.
4 Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.
5 Learn poems by heart.
6 Join professional organisations which advance the collective rights of authors.
7 A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.
8 If you fear that taking care of your children and household will damage your writing, think of JG Ballard.
9 Don't worry about posterity – as Larkin (no sentimentalist) observed "What will survive of us is love".
We could go on like this all day, but if we are reading all of their tips about writing, we're not getting much writing done... If you do want the full text it's at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one
Margaret Atwood
1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.
2 If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type.
3 Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.
4 If you're using a computer, always safeguard new text with a memory stick.
5 Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.
6 Hold the reader's attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don't know who the reader is, so it's like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B.
7 You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.
8 You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.
9 Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.
10 Prayer might work. Or reading something else. Or a constant visualisation of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.
But then I couldn't resist including the words of Roddy Doyle, his advice so sensible;
Roddy Doyle
1 Do not place a photograph of your favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.
2 Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph –
3 Until you get to Page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety – it's the job.
4 Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.
5 Do restrict your browsing to a few websites a day. Don't go near the online bookies – unless it's research.
6 Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg "horse", "ran", "said".
7 Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It's research.
8 Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments.
9 Do not search amazon.co.uk for the book you haven't written yet.
10 Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – "He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego." But then get back to work.
Then I just couldn't exclude Helen Dunmore's advice, her closing words as eloquent a reason to write as I have ever heard, and what I want to remember.
Helen Dunmore
1 Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.
2 Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices.
3 Read Keats's letters.
4 Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.
5 Learn poems by heart.
6 Join professional organisations which advance the collective rights of authors.
7 A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.
8 If you fear that taking care of your children and household will damage your writing, think of JG Ballard.
9 Don't worry about posterity – as Larkin (no sentimentalist) observed "What will survive of us is love".
We could go on like this all day, but if we are reading all of their tips about writing, we're not getting much writing done... If you do want the full text it's at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one
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