My son Travis and I gathered the sea glass collected over the years–mostly by me, a little bit by friends–since moving to a cottage a few long blocks from the beach, and in unison said, “Whoa!” There was a lot there. Brown glass, green glass, white and sea foam, and a few stray shades, anomalies. The most I bring home from a walk are a few pieces at a time, and not every day. Maybe an average of once a week. And sometimes weeks will go by, even months, without looking for it, or finding any.

I was thinking how the sea glass adding up is so like writing. It’s not uncommon for people who want to be writers, or who feel they have a book in them, to dream of having that year or month or even two week uninterrupted span when they have nothing else to do but write, and when that time comes, they will get the book written, or the short stories or essays.

What works better for me and for most successful–or productive writers, for who can truly say what success is?–is chipping away at projects. And I was reminded of collecting sea glass, and how the sea glass you see here was collected over the years–about 20. You’d never find this much in a couple of weeks, or months, no matter how you tried. This is why you can go on eBay and buy bags of “sea glass style” pieces (not truly sea glass but glass tossed in a rock tumbler to resemble sea glass): because it’s ain’t easy to find it. The conditions have to be right; the tide has to be low.

I look at our containers of sea glass and I remember. This is how words pile up: over time, little by little, bit by bit.

Photo credit: Travis Barrett

Here‘s a fun literary game for you to put off writing for a minute.

My guest host Marrie Stone talks with New York Times bestselling author Tenth of December: Stories about his latest short story collection Tenth of December.

Download audio.

(Broadcast date: March 13, 2013)

I just read a wonderful new writer’s second draft of her novel and one of my suggestions for strengthening her prose was to substitute weak adverb/verb combos for more compelling adverbs/verbs.  Unlike certain famous authors who disdain adjectives and modifiers, I believe they have their place, and if modifiers and adjectives are good, they hook the reader’s attention. So here are my go-to books on verbs and style that sit on my bookshelf and should sit on yours as well (plus a few more on creativity).

Better Than Great: A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives is fun and enlightening, with an incredible array of fresh superlatives that get your brainwaves and creativity churning.

Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose is a book on style that I constantly recommend to my students. I’ve read it a couple of times, especially before I went into the revision of Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within.

Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, 3rd Edition and Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know about Writing contain all those rules of usage you become confused about, like when to use lay/laid/lie/lain or who/whom, and so on.

And of course The Elements of Style Illustrated. I love this edition because it’s illustrated by one of my all-time favorite illustrators, Maira Kalman.

I don’t know which came first, my show or this book, but it’s the one book of essays about writing that I return to time and again. It contains two of my favorite writing essays, one by Walter Mosley and and one by Roxana Robinson. It is Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from The New York Times.

Speaking of Walter Mosley, he’s known mostly as a crime or mystery novelist, but I love his little book on writing a novel called This Year You Write Your Novel.

You don’t have to be a dancer to appreciate The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. There’s so much here on creativity that applies to artists in all genres, and I especially like what she has to say about mirrors.

When I was teaching at UC-Irvine Extension, Writing from the Inside Out: Transforming Your Psychological Blocks to Release the Writer Within was on my required reading list. The author, Dennis Palumbo, is a therapist as well as a writer, and former screenwriter, and he understands the inner workings of the creative mind, what hangs us up, how shame translates into procrastination or writers’ block, and more.

Making a Literary Life was also on my required reading list. I love Carolyn See’s voice and wisdom and humor about writing.

We have a bunch of great authors coming to town. This coming Tues., March 19, at Scape Gallery in Corona del Mar, Jo-Ann Mapson, author of Finding Casey: A Novel; Gayle Brandeis, author of Fruitflesh : Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write and The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel; and Seth Greenland, author of The Angry Buddhist will be joining us for An Evening with Novelists. They’ll talk about the art and craft of writing fiction as well as the business of writing, and their books will be on hand for purchase. You can read more by visiting the Speakers Series page or clicking here.

Next month, on April 23, we’ll host lit agent Betsy Amster where we’ll focus on how to nab an agent with a great query letter.

T. Jefferson Parker is in May, Chris Bohjalian in July, Ron Carlson in Sept., and Gregg Hurwitz is scheduled for Oct. More authors are planned but not yet firmed up, so check back here soon.

Have y’all seen this? What do you think?