First off, big news today as Amazon has released a Kindle application for the iPhone. It is, well, kind of mindblowing. I downloaded the app, signed into my Amazon account, and every book I purchased on my Kindle was instantly available to me on my iPhone. Better yet, I navigated to the book I’m currently reading and it picked up to the exact page where I had left off on my Kindle!! Wow. Wow wow. My apologies to SF Muni employees, who are probably still finding pieces of my exploded head.
Of course, I don’t find iPhones particularly easy to read on for long stretches, so I’m still glad I have a Kindle and its e-ink screen, but this will be awesome in a pinch. The main drawback is that they don’t have direct shopping through the App and you have to buy books either through your Kindle or on the Internet.
Now then. To continue positivity week: a simple question with an infinite range of possible answers.
What do you love about writing?
The big bang.
There’s something so magical about creating a story. It is an addiction, and a good one.
I love every part of the writing process except writing synops. I have been writing since I was six, so that’s almost fourteen years. I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon! 😀
I’m not sure I totally enjoy writing. When the words flow, I’m riveted, yes, but I’m not terribly in love with it. I’m just taking dictation from some unknown entity, after all. Revision–not bad, but not what I love either.
The only part I really love about writing is when I go back to a piece I’d written months, years, back, and it surprises me: Wow! Really? I wrote that?
Here’s an interesting link on how published novelists think of their writing:
https://www.guardian.co.uk/
books/2009/mar/03/
authors-on-writing
Researching. I love to research historical facts–almost as much as writing historical romance. Hell, I even love reading Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary. It’s the coolest source for ensuring my word choices are true to their time.
Anyone want to pay me to do their research? *grin*
Lis’Anne
My favorite part of writing is that it makes me feel no part of my life–no bad decision or mistake, no day spent doing something boring–is wasted. Any of it can seed a new story or give me the perspective for a scene or a line of dialogue.
I have this one scene with a minor character who plays a vital role and then disappears. When that character comes on stage, people are sucked into the scene so hard that it becomes real.
When I read that scene and realize that, somehow, it leaked out through MY thick skull, I remember why this is all worth doing, and I remember why I love writing.
I just wish I could get that same energy on every page.
Making up stories. It’s a long daydream world you get to explore and enrich for a long period of time. Then you can share your daydream with other people.
I love the magic of words. When a writer can place a series of simple letters, squiggly little marks really, in such an order that they alter the emotions of another person–that’s real magic right there.
I’d like to visit D.A.A. and Mira’s worlds!
Does the glamor and money come before or after I sell my terrific idea? And is there a special sort of query for ideas? I’m guessing it would be longer and single spaced…
Thanks for the laugh.
What i love about writing is how the little details of every day life can become magnificent stories.
Another thing is how you have an infinite number of chances to get something right…it’s the ultimate risk-free activity…of course, the risk comes later, when you decide to show your work to other people.
Making something out of nothing.
Two things come to mind: 1) being able to say something in writing that people read and say “Wow, that’s great!” but if you said the same thing in a conversation, they would look at you like you were a drug-addled weirdo; and helping other writers.
Yes, the pleasure of creating perfection.
There’s so much to love!
In fiction, it’s probably the chance to “become” another person for a while and say things I wish I could say, do things I wish I could do. Plus it’s fun to get my characters into all sorts of trouble and then figure out how to get them back out again.
In nonfiction, it’s the chance to get all my thoughts out in one place and then organize them and edit them until they flow together in a readable and interesting piece.
The scowling/gnashing at the beginning.
The relief at first cut.
The sense of otherness long after.
What’s to like?
Yet.
Great question, Nathan! I’m especially pleased to answer it today because I’m particularly enjoying my writing right now. And the best thing I like about it (an epiphany I had moments ago) was the unexpectedness of a great line or a detail that pops into your head while writing.
That link of writers on writing was great. Here’s the formatted version: Writing for a living: a joy or a chore?
I love re-inventing my title every time the book takes me down a new road;
I love the rush of meeting the perfect phrase. That glorious moment when you write a line and realize, ‘That’s it, baby – It’s Miller time’;
I love the adrenaline rush of a Friday deadline;
And I love the privilege of being in a community of wonderful women writers.
Diggin’ the positivity, Nathan!
When I do it well, I feel both professionally and personally satisfied. So, in simplest terms, writing makes me feel good.
To read each person’s response to this question is to enter into the world, not as we know it, but as we would find…the other, not so far removed from us yet different enough … to don the hat that doesn’t fit, and the one that makes one too too cool…the actor, the fool..succeeding in making life not quite the easy fit…this is what I love…the unexpected….and thank you each and every one for taking the time to write and read this addition…
I love that it transports me to another time and place of my own choosing and allows me to frolick with my friends.
I like to write because my writing is something that’s mine. Because I’ve read just about every book in my house and don’t have the opportunity to get new ones or borrow, I write to give myself something to read… and it’s a wonderful project I can work on in my spare time. I have an awful time trying to choose anything I want to read anyway. Also, it’s one of those skills that improve with time and experience, and I love looking back over all my writing and seeing how I’ve improved. But one of my main reasons is that I’m forever coming up with story ideas that I would love to see in a book and some of them I haven’t seen anywhere.
The best thing is when you have a movie flowing in your head and you can capture every scene and detail of the story concisely into a written form.
I love to write because:
Words never cry
or talk back to me
or get sick
or move away
Words don’t need dusting
washing folding, ironing,
or putting away
I don’t have to shop for words
grieve for them
battle with them
or hide them away
Words never betray me
belittle me
scam me
Words take me
to places I’ve never been and
places I know and miss
Words make sunshine
storms
sparkling snowfalls
dark and scary nights
Words return dead parents
lost friendships
grown up babies
Nothing is too evil
silly
or sickening
for words to express
Words make perfect sense
or no sense at all
and both are good
Words do the right thing
or the wrong thing
I get to chose
It’s a state of being.
Hey, everybody else beat me to the significant lines!
My advice to writers has always been if you can live without it, then you will do yourself and the world a favour if you don’t write.
I hate and love writing, just like food, I do it to live- it is the cause for my existence.
There is no more obscure moment than when you can’t create: no greater moment when you give birth to your creation.
I like the suspense of sending it off to a publisher and not knowing if it will be accepted or rejected. After puttng all that effort into it, the agony of waiting for a reply is long and,at times, unacceptable. But, when the answer finally arrives, I give out a big happy HURRAY, whether good or bad, and continue with something I’ve started in the meantime.
I love making the things that I can see in mind come to life for other people. . .writing makes me feel sane.
p.s. Thanks for your blog, I find it both educational and interesting!
The groupies.
Indoor work.
No heavy lifting.
Eva, I am on my knees before the altar of your wisdom, but are we creators or interpreters?
What I love: Writing the books that I’ve always wanted to read. I’ve spent countless hours wandering the aisles of bookstores, searching for the right book, but I’ve never been able to find it (where “it” varies). I found lots of wonderful, extraordinary, entertaining things, but not the right book, if that makes any sense…
How do you find the words to describe the need that keeps you awake at night, the frustration and devastation that comes with reworking and discarding hours of work after being judged by the harshest cynic within yourself and the deepest, most sought after pleasure that results from the satisfaction and elation of finding the perfect word for just one phrase?
I love returning to the work each day eager to find out what’s going to happen NEXT!!!!
I can’t NOT write. The stories just come sometimes. What I love is the feeling of channeling something that is bigger than me, and is still wholly mine. I love having an outlet for my dark side. I love the struggle of translating emotion and sensation into words on a page, and having those words elicit the emotion or sensation that birthed them. And as much as I love having my stories and my characters in my head, I also loved how my brain was so quiet right after I finished the first draft of my novel. It was so peaceful. Of course, it only lasted a few days, but I appreciated the vacation.
I love putting my characters in a room together and seeing what they say. They really make me laugh sometimes.
Getting a fat check for sitting on my ass drinking coffee, smoking cigars and typing for three hours a day.
— Michael Grant
Ulysses, that cracked me…
Knowing that I have the capacity to surprise myself when a character acts in a manner that I didn’t think I could imagine him/her doing.
The Zone. When I know I won’t have any distractions, I can actually sit down to write and leave the planet. During that time, I reside within my own created world. It’s the most delicious thing I know. I’ve talked to other writer friends, and we all know about The Zone. Leaving The Zone is like waking up from a particularly colorful, entertaining dream.
Slcard, Well, I do believe when we write we both interpret and create- as I describe in my “reality fiction” technique: “The mind draws out an image from the past, gives it a new reality, a life of its own.” By the way, you can get up from your knees now, thank you. Cute!
Writing is much like the green ribbon around a certain little girl’s neck. People kept asking her why she wore the green ribbon until one day a boy pulled it off and her head fell off. Writing keeps my head on my shoulders.
I love the adventures, the characters, the places,and possibilities without boundaries. Unlike reality where, when things get all tangled up, there is no delete button, writing allows me to be me in the most unbound way. It allows me the freedom to change my mind without suffering the guilt and pain of having thoroughly messed things up.
I love writing because it is freedom!
What’s Love got to do with it?
When the plot sort of clicks and you see the whole story from beginning to end, almost.
Exploring with a plan in mind, discovering the unexpected.
Is this a trick question? Are you asking about the WRITING or the STORYTELLING. I love storytelling. The feeling when something clicks inside and I know I have a story. The writing itself is damn hard work. But the storytelling isn’t. What I love about writing isn’t the same as what I love about storytelling or even about being an author.
But the truth is, I’ve been writing since I was six and I don’t think I could stop if I wanted to.