...senseless writing

senseless writing makes no sense! huh? what you talking about lenny? well what im saying is we gotta be really on top of our five senses and take notes about them so we could use them to make our characters and places and other stuff come alive for the reader.
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we gotta think about our senses and not just use them. if were listening to people talk and listen to the words and know what they mean were using our sense of hearing but mostly we dont stop and think does that person have a high voice a low voice or a real deep voice. were using our sense of sight but are we thinking does that guy talk using his hands or just sit there. does that lady cross her legs and not look people in the eyes. does one of them have some habits like knuckle cracking or playing with a moustache or swinging a leg or tapping a foot. see what i mean? that’s using our senses and thinking about them at the same time! its using our thinking senses to know about people and writing it down. if we want our charcters to be real we gotta think on all our five senses when were around people and places.
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its not just listening and watching though. we gotta let those other three senses be part of our thinking too. we gotta think about touch, smell and taste stuff. if were writing about being at a pizza place we want to know how it looks and smells and how the food tastes and how our character fits in. all this sense stuff makes real good descriptions of people and places.
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in my writing book writing magic creating stories that fly miss gail levine says, “When you tell readers what your characters are hearing, tasting, smelling, touching , and seeing, then your readers will experience it all, too, and they’ll be drawn into your story.”
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do a fun thing for yourself and for a day think about your senses and dont just use them. take a bunch of little notes and at the end of the day look at what you said. youre gonna be soooo surprised at what happens when you get on top of all your five senses!
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do you think about all of your five senses and make notes about them to help make your characters more real and make your writing better?
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…hugs from lenny

...cool rules for writing

BIG thanks to everyone who did the writers oath with me and the ones who put it on their blog. now from my new book writing magic: creating stories that fly by gail carson levine heres the really cool rules for writing.

1. The best way to write better is to write more.
2. The best way to write better is to write more.
3. The best way to write better is to write more.
4. The best way to write more is to write whenever you have five minutes and wherever you find a chair and a pen and paper or your computer.
5. Read! Most likely you don’t need this rule. If you enjoy writing, you probably enjoy reading. The payoff for this pleasure is that reading books shows you how to write them.
6. Reread! There’s nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become part of you, in a way that words in a book you’ve read only once can’t.
7. Save everything you write, even if you don’t like it, even if you hate it. Save it for a minimum of fifteen years. I'm serious. At that time, if you want to, you can throw it out, but, even then don't discard you writing lightly.

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ok... theres the cool rules for writing! im gonna try to be a good rule keeper and i hope youll be one with me.

…hugs from lenny

...writers oath

yippee i won $25! i got real lucky and won it on on miss candaces contest to help get money for that really neat charity joy 2 the world. it was a gift card from that nice miss tahereh and it was so neat that she donated it. the card was for stuff at amazon. yikes! theres a zillion books there. how could i ever know which one to pick. after looking at so many books my eyes got crossed. ha ha. finally i picked a really cool one called for boys only: the biggest, baddest book ever. its full up of all kinds of of real neat stuff and im gonna use some of it for some posts another time. but for now i want to tell you about the other book i got. its called writing magic: creating stories that fly. wow! stories that fly! how cool is that! i love it! when it got here i jumped real quick into reading it cause i want to be a really good writer and i know i could learn a lot from it. in the very first part theres a writers oath and i stopped right there and made a promise to do just what it says. then i thought it could be really nice to share it with my blogger writer friends and see if they want to do the oath with me. i put it right up at the very top of the page. so if you want to do the oath you could just say it or you could put it on your blog or you could put it by your computer or wherever you mostly do your writing. if you got here and youre not a writer its ok cause you could just do a oath to do the best you can at whatever you do. next week im gonna share some cool rules for writing right out of my new book. for this week im asking...who wants to be my oath partner? i hope its you!

…hugs from lenny