The Agile Writer – Page 9 – Greg Smith: Novelist and Coach

Lastest Articles

October 13, 2015

You Bring the Passion…

“You don’t have to be a great grammarian or great speller to write a novel. You don’t have to have connections in the writing world. What you need is a passion for your story and a plan to complete. You bring the passion, we’ll bring the plan.” -Greg Smith (2011) Founder Agile Writers Creator of the Agile Writer Method

Greg Smith Writing 0 18 sec read

October 12, 2015

TIP: Simply Publish It

If you want to get your work out in the simplest possible way at the lowest possible cost, consider Smashwords.com. You put your lightly-formatted Microsoft Word document into their engine and it converts it to Apple iBook, Barnes&Noble Nook, Kobe, Sony, and many other formats. Then Smashwords will distribute the eBook to all the different publishers AND take in all […]

Greg Smith Publishing 0 26 sec read

September 23, 2015

Holding the Whole Thing

About midway through my first draft, I became intimate with a hurdle I posit is probably specific to the novelist. How could I hold the entirety of my novel—of the world I was creating—in my mind? In Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, Block addresses this issue as one that stops many would-be novelists in their tracks. He immediately reassures […]

Guest Blogger Writing 0 2 min read

September 7, 2015

What Does it Mean to Be a Storyteller?

“If you’re going to have a story, have a big story, or none at all.” -Joseph Campbell “Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.” -Plato We have been reading Lawrence Block’s Telling Lies for Fun and Profit as our group selection for the craft of writing […]

Guest Blogger Articles 0 2 min read

August 19, 2015

Learning to Read like a Writer

Reading and writing are akin to inhalation and exhalation. Technique can be taught, but the essence—the art—of writing is not a one-to-one transferrable skill. It takes so much of who we are, what we have experienced, to make writing that resonates. It is deeply personal. An internal probing of our own experiences and sensations. So, how do we learn to […]

Guest Blogger Articles 0 2 min read

August 12, 2015

. . . and Where?

On to the question of place. Much like time, place is an under-examined element of creating a compelling and intelligible story. I, for one, was not sure how to get my character’s bodies gracefully around the space of my fictional world. There was a lot of walking into rooms, and climbing into cars, and other mundanities in my first draft. […]

Guest Blogger Articles 0 2 min read

July 31, 2015

When?

Who? What? When? And Where? Somewhere in elementary school we were all told that these are the questions you must answer to write a story. I want to focus on the last two, which often get overlooked. Without them, a story is incomplete. The seemingly trivial matters of time and place are two elements of storytelling which are as integral to […]

Guest Blogger Articles 0 2 min read

July 24, 2015

Tracking Changes

One of the most beneficial elements of the Agile Writers Method is our tightly-knit critique groups. But what do you do with the edits from your two beloved co-sojouners? There is some disagreement among the Agile Writers. One camp believes that your edits should be entered immediately every week, while they are fresh in your mind. The others—in the name […]

Guest Blogger Articles 0 2 min read

July 1, 2015

An Audience of One

I have heard two competing pieces of advice about considering your audience when writing a novel. One: define your audience. Be specific. You have to know who you’re addressing in order to create a cohesive work. Two: don’t worry about who you’re writing to. In fact, try to forget that you have any desire to publish the book and have […]

Guest Blogger Critique 0 2 min read

June 24, 2015

Writing to Discover What We Know

The title of this post is borrowed from the famous quote by Flannery O’Connor, “I write to discover what I know.” It is one of the truly mysterious pieces of the writing process that through it I come to know my own mind better. Each successive rewrite seems to take me deeper, closer to the reality of what is happening […]

Guest Blogger Writing 0 2 min read