ONE TRUE WORD for the Insecure Writers' Support Group

"All you have to do is write one true sentence.
Write the truest sentence you know."
- Ernest Hemingway

But how to do that?

Hemingway always worked until he had something done, and he always stopped when he knew what was going to happen next. That way he could be sure of going on the next day.

But how to write that true sentence?

A "true" sentence, according to Frank Barone:
shows instead of tells
uses sense words
uses active verbs
does not use the following forms of the verb "to be": is; are; was; were; has, have, had been.

But, of course, there is more :

"How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time.

I'd like to be an old man to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time."
— Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls)

More time.

But that is just it. None of us know how much time we have. How best to use what little we have.

What do we know? Is it true? How do we know for sure?

Evocative prose is no one's mother tongue. It has to be won through the trials of life and pen. And that takes the most precious of commodities : time.

Steve Job, who birthed APPLE and whose passing we still mourn, said this :

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Live your dream with everything you have. Submit that novel without fear. If it is rejected, you are no worse off than before. You have grown through the experience.

Friends write me worried that agents or editors will steal their ideas. A great writer does not have to worry, for he writes in a manner that no one can imitate. Take the plot, yes. But not the manner in which it unfolds.

Because his sentences are true sentences. They reflect his truth, his hopes, his dreams, his fears. And so the story is HIS in a way no other could write it.

If you had to write the truest sentence you know, what would it be?
***

Steve Jobs showed me WHERE WE'VE GONE WRONG

WHERE WE'VE GONE WRONG.

It started with the news :

Steve Jobs is dead.

He revolutionized our society by never letting go of his dream, thinking outside the box, and not letting what he didn't have (like a college degree) stop him from utilizing to the max what he did have ...

imagination and the ability to see the bigger picture (And we have Pixar Pictures because of that)

Also he took set-backs on the chin, using them to make himself better. (Fired from his own company, Steve Jobs was asked to come back 12 years later to raise the company from the dead.

And we have the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and now the iPad because he could see where the path NEEDED TO GO, not where everyone said IT HAD ALWAYS GONE.)

He made a true difference in his personal and professional life.

Then, I had an epiphany ...

you know --

what Victor Standish calls the strange sensation

the donkey got when the 2 X 4 smacked him in the head.

The epiphany?

We, as authors, have been going where everyone said writers have always gone :

WE'VE BEEN SINGING TO THE CHOIR.

We have marginalized ourselves. Worse, we've been blind to it.

We're writers posting to other writers, hoping they'll buy our books and tell other ... guess who?

that's right! Other writers.

Yes, they should be PART of our audience.

NOT ALL OF IT!

If we do that, we will never sell enough copies to be any more than a ripple in the ever-shrinking pond of readers.

READERS!

I can hear Robin Williams as the voice of Genie in ALADIN, "Yes! The boy can learn!"

READERS, all of them, are our target audience.

"Duh!" you go.

Yes, it's obvious ... but we have still been insisting on mostly just writing for authors.

True, authors read a lot. But the MAJORITY OF READERS are NOT authors.

We need to write UNIVERSAL posts that speak to the heart of each person who reads our prose.

AMUSE the readers.

Make them THINK.

Make them go :

"Ain't that the truth!"

or

"I never thought of it that way."

or

"I'm not alone."

If we are perceptive enough, funny enough, honest-to-life enough,

provocative enough --

the readers will come back to our blog for more of the same.

So how do you appeal to the non-writer, not turning them off with a "BUY ME!" plea

while still interesting them in picking up a book from you?

Tune in SATURDAY for

"EVERTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT LIFE I CAUGHT HELL LEARNING!"
***

ONE TRUE WORD

"All you have to do is write one true sentence.
Write the truest sentence you know."
- Ernest Hemingway

But how to do that?

Hemingway always worked until he had something done, and he always stopped when he knew what was going to happen next. That way he could be sure of going on the next day.

But how to write that true sentence?

A "true" sentence, according to Frank Barone:
shows instead of tells
uses sense words
uses active verbs
does not use the following forms of the verb "to be": is; are; was; were; has, have, had been.

But, of course, there is more :

"How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time.

I'd like to be an old man to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time."
— Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls)

More time.

But that is just it. None of us know how much time we have. How best to use what little we have.

What do we know? Is it true? How do we know for sure?

Evocative prose is no one's mother tongue. It has to be won through the trials of life and pen. And that takes the most precious of commodities : time.

Steve Job, who birthed APPLE, said this :

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Live your dream with everything you have. Submit that novel without fear. If it is rejected, you are no worse off than before. You have grown through the experience.

Friends write me worried that agents or editors will steal their ideas. A great writer does not have to worry, for he writes in a manner that no one can imitate. Take the plot, yes. But not the manner in which it unfolds.

Because his sentences are true sentences. They reflect his truth, his hopes, his dreams, his fears. And so the story is HIS in a way no other could write it.

If you had to write the truest sentence you know, what would it be?
***