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The Weekend Writer

Posted February 18 2012 by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Little Corona beach, early.

It’s Saturday morning, and what are most normal people doing? They’re sleeping in, or going for a walk or a run, or to the Farmer’s Market, drinking coffee, reading the paper, taking it easy.  I love doing all this too, and I do, too.  But writers aren’t normal people.  Writers are a strange, wonderful breed, amongst my favorite people. 

So live up to your vocation or avocation.  Don’t act normal. As literary agent Betsy Lerner (author of Forest for the Trees) said when she came on my show, nurture your quirks, exaggerate how you’re different from others–in looks, in behavior, in your writing. And write on the weekend.  While everyone else is relaxing, drinking beer and watching the game, and just generally taking it easy, use a bit of your weekend days to write.  Even if you only visit with your writing, even if you’ve only spent 15 minutes writing, you will have written and you’ll feel better about yourself for it. 

Don’t know what to write?  Here’s a prompt: Wherever you are, at this minute, write from where you sit.  What’s going on around you? What do you see? Smell? Hear?   Is there a window nearby? Or maybe you’re outside, at a cafe. What’s going on? What do you hear?

Write 250 words and post it here. I’d love to read it.

No disclaimers, no doubts: writers, listen up….

Posted February 17 2012 by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

All of us are plagued with doubts at one time or another–or all the time.  Writers suffer from this as much as anyone else–maybe more–because most of us are too sensitive, neurotic, obsessive, reactionary, on and on.

But when you’re sitting down to write, or even contemplating writing or planning to write, this is the worst time to let doubts creep in: I’m no good, Why me? What’s new about what I have to say? I’m horrible at plotting! My dialogue sucks! My vocabulary is teensy weensy….The list goes on!

In my Literary Posse workshop, I have an aqua Bell jar that my students have to stuff with money when they let a disclaimer drip from their mouths.  Disclaimers and keeping that negative self-talk does nothing–nothing at all!–for you as a writer, or you as most things.  All doubts and disclaimers do is keep you from writing and send you hightailing it to clean the grout or feed your face or whatever it is that you do as a lovely distraction.

So when you hear that negative self-talk or think about how bad (not good) a writer (or singer or photographer or artist or musician… you are, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to get out your notebook (or camera or easel….) and start creating.  Writers write. Writers progress by writing. Ideas are great, but ideas aren’t writing. 

Get out a timer, set it for 15 minutes, and start writing. Freewrite about a character in a story, write a scene in a story, a scene in your memoir, or whatever interests you. Don’t stop writing. 

I promise you that the more you do this, the more the doubts and disclaimers will stop and the more you will progress in your writing.

What’s your negative self-talk and how do you get past it–or do you?

President Obama is in our hamlet of Corona del Mar this morning

Posted February 16 2012 by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

All right, this isn’t about writing, but it’s something to write about. President Obama is in an adjacent neighborhood at a fundraising breakfast. My friend Deb and I walked down at 6:15 and joined the gathering crowd. Overheard: “Anyone who likes Obama is on welfare.”  O-kay! 

 Here’s what it looked like on Pacific Coast Highway, in Corona del Mar, this morning prior to 8 a.m.