Questions about writing answered by Ursula

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Roy1

Roy G
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http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2015/07/27/navigating-the-ocean-of-story/

Link via Andrew Porter.

Quoting Ursula "I have enough vigor and stamina these days to write poems, for which I am very thankful. It takes quite a lot of vigor and stamina to write a story, and a huge amount to write a novel. I don’t have those any more, and I miss writing fiction.

Reliable vigor and stamina is also required to teach a class or run a workshop, and so I had to give up teaching several years ago. But I miss being in touch with serious prentice writers.

So in in hope of regaining some of the pleasures of teaching and talking about writing fiction with people who do, I’m going to try an experiment: a kind of open consultation or informal ongoing workshop in Fictional Navigation, here on Book View Café.

I hope it will work its own process out as we go along, but here’s how I plan to start:

I invite questions about writing fiction from people who are working seriously at writing fiction."

Note: Due to enthusiastic response, the question submission form has been disabled for now. Once the current round of questions has been dealt with, it may be reactivated.

and here is the link to the first answer
http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2015/07/27/navigation-q1-how-do-you-make-something-good/
 
Ursula K Le Guin said:
Wouldn’t it be nice? But alas, there are no recipes. We have no Julia Child. Successful professional writers are not withholding mysterious secrets from eager beginners. The only way anybody ever learns to write well is by trying to write well. This usually begins by reading good writing by other people, and writing very badly by yourself, for a long time.

The poet Theodore Roethke said it: “I learn by going where I have to go.”

There are “secrets” to making a story work — but they apply only to that particular writer and that particular story.
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One of my favourite writers.
 
Is the question about who she would want to write her life story a hint at a biography? That would be brilliant.
 
Proper URL for Myths & Modernism Why suspicious of MFA. TinyURL (or ANY URL shortening) is an evil service, can be used to inject malware and also track page views. Invented for things like Twitter.
her book on writing – “Steering the Craft: A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story” – is not something any aspiring fiction writer should ignore. The book – significantly revised from its original 1998 edition – avoids laying down strict rules, but takes a back-to-basics approach to prose writing. Each chapter includes examples of good writing to emulate, including Tolkien and a tale from a Native American tribe of Oregon, but with emphasis on writers like Kipling, Dickens and Virginia Woolf. The book, in short, is both open and in some ways resolutely old-fashioned.
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This will make some here grin
And they were really afraid of semicolons! The semicolon struck terror into the hearts of many grown women. Well, there’s something wrong there. The semicolon is a pair of dots that ought to be fully under your control.
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J Riff said:
Well, well, will hafta wartch for that.
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Always hover the mouse to see actual link in the status bar. Very important to detect phising emails. Sadly many touch user interfaces lack the important mouse hover functionality to see image text/tool tips/definitions on the page and real link in status bar. QR codes are also badly implemented as often the URL (web address) isn't displayed [on the phone with a load yes/no, so I never use QR on phone except ones I printed myself.]. Of course I wouldn't print out fake QR codes for Tesco veg counter to take people to porn or malware sites. :)
URL shortening services exist to either make money (tracking you), or for nefarious reasons. Users pasting in short versions of URLS can easily put a link to anything and you can't know what it is till you click.
No Anti-virus program is 100% effective. The common infection vector is an evil website or advert link on a good website. Google and others DO serve adverts with malware or for illegal products, they do not check what their customers are doing.
 
OK but these URLs were from a trusted source and very long URL's, that break across a page, do not always survive E mailing intact. Shortened ones are useful on twitter and also allow the person who generated it to see how many people visit the page. I use a bit.ly to see how many visit my e book page.
Roy
 
Roy1 said:
but these URLs were from a trusted source and very long URL's
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No-one else can know if that is true before clicking!
Sorry, anyone is daft to trust people they don't know or a URL protection service. I have special protection set up in my Browser and I use Linux on the computer browsing the internet and using email
The only way to "trust" a URL is to see it before clicking it, anything else eventually ends in tears. There are NO trusted sources, only moderately trusted domains.

URL length only mattered ever to stupid services like Twitter, who are dropping their silly 140 character limit.
 
That seems to be only direct messages::
Roy1 said:
Didn't know Twitter were changing the limit.
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:: not tweets. I wish they'd at least double the limit; but I would still use the shortened links. All that said one should only consider clicking on short links from sources you trust which for some people(we will leave unnamed)means no one.
 
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