In his article How to write your book faster, Steve Manning claims there are a number of myths about gaining success as an author, such as these:

Talent: in order to write a book, the less writing talent you have, the easier it will be for you. If you’re a professional writer right now, it’s an uphill struggle as you try to perfect what’s already perfect.

Creativity: I have one word of advice for you when it comes to creativity. DON’T. I’ll show you exactly what publishers want… and it’s NOT creativity. Those who wish to be creative will rarely be published. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you’ll be a very successful author.

Writing ability: Do you know how to talk? Then you know how to write! Writing isn’t like painting or sculpting or playing tennis. You don’t need to spend years learning the basics and mastering the techniques. You’ve already done that as a child. You’re already a master writer.

From article: How to write your book faster, by Steve Manning of WriteABookNow

[photo: Nicolas Cage as screenwriter in the film "Adaptation"]

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Getting the needed meetings to get his script for “American Beauty” actually produced [by DreamWorks] only happened some years after Alan Ball [photo] was discovered by a talent scout at Carsey-Werner Television who had seen his play, Five Women Wearing the Same Dress.

In a Writers Store interview, Steven Prigge [author of Created By: Inside the Minds of TV's Top Show Creators] notes, “There are many different ways to get a writing job that doesn’t include fetching co-workers’ lattés, Frappuccinos or any other coffee oriented beverage.

“Many sitcom writers have been discovered as stand-up comedians. For instance, Larry David (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm) was discovered while performing stand-up comedy at Catch a Rising Star in New York City.

“Shawn Ryan (The Shield) won a playwriting contest in college, and one of his plays was entered into the American College Theater Festival. … Because of the acclaim of his play, Shawn was rewarded by being brought to L.A. to spend a few weeks hanging out in the writer’s room of My Two Dads. He eventually sold a story idea to the producers and his TV writing career began.

“It essentially comes down to finding a platform where your voice can be heard by others who are in the position to hire you, or can get you hired. The bottom line is that you have to get yourself out there and get noticed.”

There are a number of ideas and resources about promoting yourself and your creative projects on the page promoting creative talent - including the service Get Known Now.

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Technorati tags: .. gifted adults .. writing .. screenwriting .. writers
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As a poet, writer, playwright, director, and producer, Nathalie Handal articulates the primacy of words and experience in responding to an interview question about the inspiration for her poetry collection The Lives of Rain:

“To me, the world is a poem, a poem I keep writing and re-writing. All that I observe, that I experience, filters itself into words. So much inspires me, the butterfly on the windowsill about to take flight, the gentle dance of the water, the different shapes of the grey-blue mist, the lover looking for his shadow, the child looking for her mother.

“I wanted Lives to be a testament of my Palestinian exile and dislocation, my Diasporic experience—and my numerous cultural, historical and literary influences… I wanted the poems to transmit the suffering that we endure and which we consciously or unconsciously inflict on our close and wider community, and the vulnerability of the human condition. I wanted the poems to convey resistance and hope.”

Referring to how writers [and other artists] are often categorized, she says, “I consider myself as a writer and I often struggle with set definitions, labels and boxes many tend to put writers in. However, if one were to refer to me as an Arab-American that would be fine so long as they understood that I could also be referred to as a Palestinian, American, French, and Latina.”

In another comment about the influences of multiple languages on her awareness and work, Handal notes, “Words evoke all sorts of memories and images. Languages take you to different places and times. I grew up with many different languages since I experienced multiple displacements and so, of course, languages, rhythms, tonalities, color and expressions have played an important role in my imagination, consciousness and subconscious. Arabic, French, Spanish, English live inside of my body, my mind and move me in ways that remain mysterious to me.”

From An Interview with Nathalie Handal, by Elizabeth Nunez, Chair of PEN American Open Book Program

[From nathaliehandal.com - also source of the portrait]

Books by Nathalie Handal:
The Poetry of Arab Women and The Lives of Rain

Related Talent Development Resources pages:
identity
writing : teen/young adult
writing
writing resources : interviews articles sites
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Technorati tags: writing creative expression gifted and talented Nathalie Handal
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In spite of myself, my hunger to write continues. Like a rogue wave, determined to hold up the meaning of my life against the undertow of my culture, my past, and my family’s fundamentalism, it surges and ebbs. I want to trust it.

To be carried into the deeper waters of the things I do not understand, to let the questions remain unanswered. I’ve stood too long on the shore, hoping to feel capable, hoping for the authority to speak, the confidence to pit myself against all the rigid certainty of my past.

I’ve been waiting to be transformed into a Borzoi of a writer. Sleek, refined, reserved and competent. Unconcerned with the approval of others. Instead, I’m a gangly golden retriever, rocking and swamping my little boat.

Eager, boundlessly expressive, full of hyperbole, and loving - above all, loving - everyone and everything because they’re here, because they’re fleeting, because I can.

From essay Why I Don’t Write - by Cat Robson
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Related pages:
abuse & creative expression
nurturing mental health: writing
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We live with a lot of mythologies and concepts about the “inspiration” and “craft” aspects of expression that influence how we approach doing something creative. One of those ideas is that anything so complex as a film script must necessarily take a long time to develop.

But screenwriter James Lamberg recalls a meeting in 1992 with Sylvester Stallone:

“I was working for a national radio station at the time and managed to spend thirty minutes interviewing him. And it changed my life. Why?

“I asked him about his screenwriting career. I wanted to verify something I’d heard. ‘Let’s talk about Rocky,’ I said. ‘The film grossed over $250 million – and turned you into an overnight superstar. What a script!

“I paused nervously and waited for a response. You know what he said?

“He laughed. Then added: ‘And you know what? It took me three days to write. I locked myself in my room after watching the Ali fight and just wrote it!’

“I was stunned. Genuinely. I didn’t know what to say. After the longest ten seconds of my career, I repeated to him: ‘You wrote it – in just three days? Screenplays take months, even years…!’

“He gave a friendly sneer and stared deep at me: Listen. Everyone thinks that. That’s the problem. Writing quickly means writing success!’”

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From Wikipedia: Rocky (1976) was awarded the Academy Award for Best Picture. On March 24, 1975, Stallone saw the Ali-Chuck Wepner fight which inspired the foundation idea of Rocky. That night Stallone went home, and in three days he had written the script for Rocky - which was nominated for ten Academy Awards in all, including two for Stallone himself, for Best Actor and for Best Original Screenplay.

Screenwriter James Lamberg is coauthor of the “Movie in a Month” course.
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Here are two other writing programs:

Million-Dollar Screenwriting

and WriteABookNow - How To Write A Book On Anything in 14 Days or Less - A Guide for Professionals
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[From article: Writer and subject coexist as Arbus, by Jay A. Fernandez, Los Angeles Times, Nov 8 2006; photo: Diane Arbus (1923-1971)]

Screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson says of her script for “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus”: “What I wanted to do was to make a portrait of her from my perspective as an artist. This is my interpretation of her birth as an artist.”

Though Wilson used many of basic facts culled from Patricia Bosworth’s “Diane Arbus: A Biography,” [the character of] Lionel was wholly invented. Afflicted by a rare condition that causes his body to be covered by hair, the charming former circus attraction is more than just a writer’s construct ripe with symbolism.

To Wilson, he contains the DNA of Arbus’ real-life inspirations — not just an amalgam of all her unusual subjects (transvestites, little people, so-called circus freaks), but also a representation of her lover and mentor Marvin Israel, a married painter who pushed and promoted her art.

“I wanted [Lionel] to be her imagination, herself, her muse,” Wilson says. “I wanted her to develop a relationship with the beast inside of her that haunts her. That was very much a part of Diane Arbus, the thrill of fear.”

As an adventurous teen-ager, Wilson was an avid photographer very much influenced by Arbus, who killed herself in 1971. In an uncanny parallel, when Wilson was 16 she was photographing some gay female friends as they were naked and decided to disrobe herself to more fully engage the artistic process. “It wasn’t salacious,” she says. “It was naive - and sweet. I grew up in the world of ‘Last Tango in Paris,’ of ‘Hair.’ I grew up in a world that already housed [Arbus'] imagination.”

This episode mirrors Arbus’ own famous foray into a nudist colony in 1958 to photograph the residents. “Fur” is bookended by the significance of this moment in the artist’s evolution.

“For Diane Arbus — and for myself — art was intimately connected with eroticism, with trespassing, with romantic relationships, with the Other,” Wilson says.

Related page on her life and work: Diane Arbus

Also see quotes by Erin Cressida Wilson about her earlier film “Secretary” on the page sexuality4

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