Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision—and Beyond
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Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision—and Beyond
The glue that holds everything together is the fluid constancy of the mind, technically expressed through “linkage.” Techniques like this one translate that constant mental energy into the external materials of the craft: tricks of the trade.
Kenneth Atchity • Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision—and Beyond
• Stop doing things no one needs to do. • Stop doing things someone else will do if you stop doing them. • Stop doing things that aren’t the kind only you can do.
Kenneth Atchity • Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision—and Beyond
Your first interview, of course, will take longest with probably least satisfactory response (although beginner’s luck may work for you here). But don’t let that upset you; the individual interview will follow its own laws of time, so structure it to take advantage of this inevitability.
Kenneth Atchity • Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision—and Beyond
"First Time" – the fact that new things take longer – relates to that advice first-time founders are given about pitching investors. They recommend pitching less important/likely-to-invest VCs first so you can make all your mistakes with less risk. I always interpreted this as scarcity thinking, or fear-driven thinking, a criticism of the founder's ability. But that view paints over the fact that First Time is a real thing we ought to respect. The real danger in ignoring this advice and going straight after your top VC is not that you are more likely to fuck it up and lose the chance to win their investment, it's that you'll experience the negative reinforcing effects that come from not honouring First Time and will mistakenly belief you're not up to the job at all.
The only way for the islands to attract visitors is for them to speak first in the visitors’ tongues.
Kenneth Atchity • Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision—and Beyond
At best you slay them, at worst return to tell us how you received the wounds we can now see. The writer is shaman and sorcerer, willing to go into realms forbidden to those residing always in the safety of the Continent.
Kenneth Atchity • Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision—and Beyond
Why are we doing this? Because the pain is the truth at the heart of your story; and this time you can have the pain serve your creative purposes instead of serving the pain as you may have done once. The writer who revisits the demons inside the door will not see them as your demons, but as demons that affected you long ago, affected the you that
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Contraction and Last Time come into play as you see time running out in the interview. That’s when you ask the pointed questions that haven’t yet been answered, and when you give the visionary the opportunity to make an eloquent closing statement. Interviewing isn’t an exact science and it is a science that improves with practice. The most
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Richard Lanham’s Revising Prose and Bruce Ross-Larson’s Edit Yourself are the best books I know of that actually take you through the steps of self-editing until you can master the skill yourself.
Kenneth Atchity • Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision—and Beyond
A life should be as carefully planned as a work of art so that it takes on the characteristic shape of your mind (the true meaning of “lifestyle”). You set goals for yourself by asking what you envision yourself doing in seven years. What image of yourself have you been secretly entertaining? Bring the image out of the closet; entertain it
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