from Cervantes (from the Burton Raffel translation of Don Quijote):

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All you have to do is try, with meaningful words, properly and effectively arranged, to honestly unroll your sentences and paragraphs, clearly, sensibly, just explaining what you're up to as well and as powerfully as you can. Let your ideas be understood without making them complicated or obscure. And see, too, if your pages can make sad men laugh as they read, and make smiling men even happier. . .

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Just write.

I hate when people say things like "if you want to be a writer then you have to write everyday" because some people just write as a hobby and simply don't have time to write everyday.

So I don't write everyday. I write, when I am in the mood and have some free time lined up. (Which also includes most of my time at work since teaching English in Japan involves little work).

But I have found if I analyze everything and make sure I have the story completely planned out, then I never start. I recently planned a story for over a year, but when I sat down tow write it, it came out in about 2 hours and was better than what I had planned.

So in conclusion, maybe plan your thoughts a bit, but then just write. If you write yourself into a corner, then you can stop and analyze how and why. I use XXXX for names or things I will fill in later, that way I can do a CTRL-F search for XXXX and quickly find them. I also don't worry too much about form and structure as long as it's close. Then I go back and pick through things better and check my wording and make sure I didn't make 5th grader mistakes like "He was over their".

When you're going good and the words are just flowing out of you---stop and take a break for the day. That way you'll be eager to come back to it the next day.

The more clarity you have when you sit down at the keyboard, the more you'll be able to write, and the more successful you'll feel.

quote:

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And see, too, if your pages can make sad men laugh as they read, and make smiling men even happier. . .

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As a reader, if I feel nothing, the story has failed. Latest in my development as a writer, that's my focus. It's a product of synthesizing my study into one challenging demand of story, stimulating reader emotions. After an intensive study of the structural and aesthetic elements of story, in order, plot, character, setting, discourse, theme, tone, rhetoric, and resonance, I've come back around to what's fundamentally different between story and anecdote. An anecdote is about an interesting milieu, idea, character, or event, a la Mr. Card. Without an emotionally stimulating plot, however, an anecdote doesn't rise to story, and that's it. The bane of writers' existence, how to emotionally stimulate the audience.

From studying the stories that moved me, I've uncovered a formula of causation that offers assistance for understanding emotional stimulation in story.

In the beginnings, First Cause / emotional response / acting upon the First Cause / emotional response / reaction to acting / emotional response / effect / emotional response. Rinse and repeat toward climax and resolution. Cause and effect.

The First Cause is related to a primary emotion, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, joy, love. The emotional responses revolve through primary and secondary emotions, ie, sympathy.

In a paraphrase of Descartes famous saying; cogito, ergo sum, I feel, therefore I am. When I read, I want to feel in the presence and moment of the story and in the hearts and minds of the characters. Then and only then am I truly in the story.