I've been taking Val Hobbs ' writing class the past few weeks.  For all you in the Ventura/Santa Barbara/SLO are, I highly recommend it.  She really makes you dig and asks some pretty tough questions, such as, "Why are you writing this story?" and "What's the square root of 938773?"  Seriously, I found that first one to be pretty difficult.

One thing that popped up in class, though, was that the book I thought was young adult is really middle grade.  If I'm going to stick to the voice that comes naturally and is funnier, my YA plot no longer works.  Dang, dang, and double dang!

So it's back to the drawing board for this sorrowful bloke.  I've got my genre nailed.  Now if only I can find a plot.  And what does this mean to you, Dear Reader?  It means if you have any plot ideas, please send them my way.  Greg

I was hanging out with my good friend Kurt Vonnegut the other day.  Kurt is the author of Slaughterhouse Five.  Here's what he had to say about writing.

Greg: So, Kurt, do you have any rules or guidelines we writers should follow?

Kurt:  Here is Creative Writing 101:

Greg: Oh goody!  Fire away.

Kurt: 1 - Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2 - Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3 - Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4 - Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5 - Start as close to the end as possible.
6 - Be a sadist.  No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7 - Write to please just one person.  If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8 - Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible.  To heck with suspense.  Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Greg - Thanks, Kurt.  Anything else? 

Kurt: Yes.  The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964).  She broke practically every one of my rules but the first.  Great writers tend to do that.

Greg: Good ol' Flannery.  Any advice on dealing with a bad review?

Kurt: Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

I recently spent some time with Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner John Steinbeck.  Here’s what he had to say about writing:

Greg - John, what is your advice to writers?

John - Over the years I have written a great many stories and I still don’t know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

Greg:  The ol’ butt to chair concept, eh?  Please go on.

John: If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.  The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader.  If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by on means always, find a way to do it.

Greg: Anything else?

John: It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death.

Greg:  John Steinbeck, scared?  Tell me it isn’t so.

John:  It’s so.

Greg:  I asked you not to tell me that.

John:  I will go so far as to say that the writer who is not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.

Greg: Any final words, you Nobel Prize winner you? 

John: I remember one last piece of advice given to me.  It was during the exuberance of the rich and frantic ‘20s, and I was going out into the world to try and be a writer.  I was told, “It’s going to take a long time."  It has taken a long time—a very long time.  And it is still going on, and it has never gotten easier.

Okay, I'm happy.  First we get a feature film made out of the Get Smart series, one of my favorite TV shows as a kid, and now Horton Hears a Who is being made into a movie.  Can life get any better?  I don't think so.  Someone out there is paying attention to the kid inside me and I'm loving it.  You can see the Horton trailer here .

In more book-related news, I'm beginning to get requests for animation rights for the Melvin Beederman Superhero series.  I've always said he's just too adorable not to be on TV.  Move over Sponge Bob—here comes Melvin Beederman!

I recently sat down to chat with Jack London, author of Call of the Wild, White Fang, and hundreds of short stories, articles, and book reviews.

Greg: Hi, Jack, do you have any advice to writers?

Jack: Sure.  You wrote your story at white heat. Hell is kept warm by unpublished manuscripts written at white heat. Develop your locality. Get in your local color. Develop your characters. Make your characters real to your readers. Get out of yourself and into your readers' minds and know what impression your readers are getting from your written words. Always remember that you are not writing for yourself but that you are writing for your readers.

Greg: Please, go on.

Jack: Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don't loaf and invite inspiration: light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it. 

Greg: Okay, those are some good don'ts.  How about a couple do's?

Jack: Set yourself a 'stint,' and see that you do that 'stint' every day.  Study the tricks of the writers who have arrived. They have mastered the tools with which you are cutting your fingers.  Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.

And work. Find out about this earth, this universe ...