Author: Álex Hernández

Suscription reminder

Since we moved the Writing Workshop here and started off the bilingual blog things are getting busy! Unique visitors for the month of July amount to almost 60,000 – thanks a lot everyone!

To stay up to date with all that’s going on, I recommend RSS suscriptions, for example through Google Reader, so you won’t miss any new Posts or even any new Comments, where debates are getting hot!

Additionally, for Spanish speakers or students wishing to listen to the podcast, there are two suscription options available: RSS o iTunes.

Those with less experience with computers -or simply not willing to suscribe despite my recommendations- simply need to return frequently and have a look at the latest changes.

A note about the comments: unfortunately I’ve been so far unable to separate them by language, so currently all you see are Spanish-language comments. Please don’t let that refrain you from writing your own comments in English – it’s perfectly OK to have them mingle together until we find a better solution for this. (Suggestions are welcome too)

For those who already know all of this and are sick of having me repeat it, here’s the funny trivia/news of the day: I just found out that Placebo are Mrs. Carrington fans!

The reader’s role

I just happened upon this quote:

We’re not as clever as people think. Intelligence is letting the book open so the reader can finish it as they wish.

Colum McCann

It reminded me of one of the epigrams that form the preface to the wonderful The Picture of Dorian Gray.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Oscar Wilde

They’re not the only ones who think the reader wirtes as much as the writer.

I see the role of the writer as creating a room with big windows and leaving the reader to imagine. It’s a meeting on the page.

Kevin Crossley-Holland

Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.

Paul Auster

What do you think?

(Español) Podcast 23

Bad advice

In the last few days I’ve seen several bloggers mention that receiving bad advice can severely harm your writing. And we don’t mean here “negative feedback”, which should always be part of any feedback and help you improve your text. We’re talking about advice that is wrong and misleading.

Well that’s what I’ve been finding lately in the blog Advanced Fiction Writing. Their shameful article on how to write characters of the opposite gender lit my suspicion. So I checked back. A very specific question on POV received a boring digression on the different kind of narrators available to writers. Another question on whether to call characters by their first or last name received the good advice that writers should stick to one name, then gave a bad example of multi-named Voldemort. And so it goes.

This is not “Advanced” writing of any kind. This is the most simplistic adivising I’ve ever seen outside of Facebook. Stay away from bad advice! That’s my advice ;-)

50,000 words

People often ask how long should their novel be. We’ve all faced the problem of wanting to fill up two hundred pages and having nothing to say after only didty. Contests often deman a minimum of 50.000 words. What is the right length of a novel?

Let the experts speak:

  • Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland – 26.700 words
  • Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness – 38.500 words
  • H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness – 41.300 words
  • Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows – 58.800 words
  • Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles – 59.600 words
  • Isaac Asimov, Foundation – 66.000 words
  • James Joyce, Dubliners – 67.500 words
  • J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye – 74.000 words
  • J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal – 77.000 words
  • Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game – 101.200 words
  • George Orwell, 1984 – 104.000 words
  • Stephen King, The Shining – 162.000 words
  • Leopoldo Alas Clarín, La Regenta – – 30.400 309.000 words
  • Miguel de Cervantes , Don Quixote – 383.000 words

As you see, both classics and recent best-sellers range in a wide variety of possible lengths. In other words: a novel is as long as it is. It will last for as long as the story requires. Asimov and Carroll were quite consisten in the length of their sequels -perhaps because they were, with all due respect, more of the same-, while for Card and Rowling the sequels grew longer as their universes expanded.

Take a look at your bookshelves: are the books thick, thin, or every size? And which are your favourites? That might be the type of novel that you’re best at writing…

Stolen ideas

Our Spanish commenters are debating writing contests and how some are an opportunity while others are a theft.

From this topic of stolen ideas comes another interesting debate: Which of these statements is true?

  • Don’t refrain from moving your ideas by fear of having them stolen – there are more where those came from.
  • Any single person will have, at most, ONE great idea in their whole life.

What do you think?

Finding time

Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!
Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!

We wonder too often how to find time for writing.

Quite accidentally I’ve found a nice way: when I get home after work, unless I have some other plan, I grab my laptop, play some  music, pour a drink, sit at the balcony and write.

  • The cats meow? I feed them, then go on writing.
  • I get hungry? I grab a bite, watch something while I eat it, then go on writing.
  • The dishes pile up? I tidy up, then go on writing.

Instead of findig time for writing, I just write – and find time for everything else.

Why don’t you try it?