“The human brain is a wonderful thing. It starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.” – George Jessel

Maybe, in your mind, you're exclusively a writer, and definitively not a performer. Or maybe you are a performer. Or could be. Or secretly want to be. Even if you don’t consider yourself a performer, consider some of the advantages to writing out loud (in addition to writing words, of course, not instead of). 

If you’re an author, you’ll be making public and, we hope, media appearances when your book is published. If you’re a script writer, you’ll be pitching projects to executives, producers and/or in the writers room. If you're a journalist, you have to pitch your story to editors. Those are all performances. This is the age of Youtube. Almost everybody goes on camera eventually, so why not get used to it now?

It's a great marketing asset if you can deliver your material to a live audience as well as on the page. It certainly worked out for David Sedaris, Truman Capote, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and many other writers who became known (and paid) for their public appearances.

12 or 13 Reasons to Perform Your Writing

When you perform your original material on stage, you can…

“Find out who you are. Then do it on purpose.”
- Dolly Parton

What’s that? You say you have certain natural strengths as a writer? You want to choose Projects that play to your strengths – or develop weaker muscles – but you’re not sure exactly what’s in your creative toolkit?

The WSAT (Writing Skills Aptitude Test) is a way to rate your own skills at different aspects of the writing process. If you want to make things really interesting, ask someone familiar with your writing to evaluate your strengths and see if it jibes with your own assessment.

Writing can hard, frustrating and often maddening, but if you're clear on your motivations it can help get you through a rocky patch.

Different writers write different projects for different reasons. No reason is wrong and any one or combination can get you going. Why are you writing what you're writing?

18 Reasons Writers Write

1) Creative Rapture
2) Share Information
3) Make Money
4) Make Your Mark on the World
5) Change the World
6) Therapy/Self-Knowledge
7) Requirement/Assignment
8) Tell Your Side of the Story
9) Sense of Accomplishment
10) Everyone Tells You You Should
11) No One Else is Doing It
12) Professional Credit/Advancement
13) Obsessed with Project or Topic
14) Shame & Self-Loathing of Not Writing
15) Find Out How the Story Ends
16) Help Others
17) Not Qualified to do Anything Else
18) Stop Talking About It and Finally Do It

I’m sure there are others too, and it's always a good time to think about your genuine motivation(s) for writing. The clearer you are about your goals, the better you can design your Project to meet them. Of course you can change or amend your goals later, but this seminal manifesto can also help guide your work and serve as a touchstone to re-visit if the Project gets off-track later.

ADVISORY: If you can’t answer one or both questions, don’t worry about it, just keep going with your project anyway.

For more useful tips, check in with writing coach & consultant Greg Miller. Call him directly at 323-717-4731 to get more useful advice for your project.

Don’t underestimate the power of a good character name. The name is usually the first thing the reader knows about the character. It is our first impression.

I can tell you as a ‘reader’ and story analyst for movie studios, production companies and literary agencies, one thing that makes a script or book stand out – or not – is the character names. The names are a cue to readers about how inventive the rest of the writing will be. And that goes for non-fiction and memoir too.

On a practical level, it’s hard for a reader to keep track of a bunch of characters with similar sounding names like Joe, John, Jane and Joan. Which one was Joe again? And was he married to Jane or Joan? The reader (hopefully) keeps reading and hopes the characters will differentiate themselves through action, but why not make it easy for us to tell the players without a score card?

A character’s name helps define the character, and the array of names in a project can do a lot to define the overall tone.

8 Tips for Naming Your Characters

1. Use a phone book
2. Read the sports section of the paper
3. Keep a list of interesting names as you find them
4. Use a variety of first and last names
5. Include ethnic variety
6. Use a map or atlas
7. Vary the number of syllables in different characters’ names
8. Brainstorm qualities the character exhibits and turn one of them into a name

ADVISORY: Naming your characters can help develop your project, or become a huge time-waster. Don’t wait to find the perfect name for every character. Proceed anyway. Sometimes the characters aren’t that well defined at first so it’s not clear what kind of name would be best for them, like some people don’t name their baby until after it’s born.

For more useful tips, check in with writing coach & consultant Greg Miller. Call him directly at 323-717-4731 to get more useful advice for your project.

THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HARD WORK - WE LOOK FORWARD TO REVIEWING YOUR SCRIPTS & DVDs OVER THE HOLIDAYS AND ANNOUNCING A WINNER IN JANUARY.

The Other Network Comedy Contest deadline is Dec. 15, 2010 and we're happy to announce that at least one winner will get their work seen by Comedy Central VP of Development, and executive producer of the Comedy Central Stage, Gary S. Mann, who also previously worked at HBO.

Get details and enter now.

I did an extended hourlong interview about writing autobiographical non-fiction and it's available free for your listening pleasure. CLICK HERE.

Here's the pre-interview I did:

Lisa: Greg, I know we’re going to cover this in more detail on our call, but what are some of the factors that make a best-selling memoir, like Eat, Pray, Love?

Greg: My theory is that the major factor that made it such a publishing phenomenon is that it embodied a compound fantasy. 1) That Gilbert had the house and relationship to begin with. 2) That she was willing to walk out. 3) To chuck it all and just go traveling (which is a fantasy because, she got paid to write the book so she wasn’t really chucking it all: she was doing a job plus getting to eat in Italy, pray in India and find love again).

Also, getting featured on Oprah. That really helps sell books.

The Comedian's Way workshop for Writers, Performers & Other Humans is the place to develop your authentic voice and deepest material for one-person shows, personal essays, books, scripts, blogs, or just to have a better attitude about life.

Each class starts with a Q & A and an inspirational rap from Beth about some aspect of the creative process. Here for your entertainment and edification is video of a recent talk about the 7 Questions Every Writer Should Ask Themself Before Sitting Down To Write.

Read more about the workshop on Beth's site and the Un-Cabaret website.

Class meets most Saturdays, 11am-1pm at M-Bar, 1253 N. Vine St. LA 90038. For more info, call 323-717-4731 or e-mail us.

I was just talking to a great TV comedy writer, who was stuck in the middle of a feature film script. He was bored of the characters and had lost touch with the excitement and momentum that got him started on the project in the first place.

Kubler-Ross famously ennumerated the stages of coping with death (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). Writers face these stages when finishing a project too, but before you get to that there are other stages to be aware of. Each one has their challenges, and it's really helpful to know which stage you're in because that helps you focus on the right challenges instead of getting caught up in problems you don't have yet - or anymore.

A screenwriter friend shared this piece of oral tradition that lays out the stages of a Hollywood project:
1) Unbridled Enthusiasm
2) Total Despair
3) Desperate Search for the Guilty
4) Punishment of the Innocent
5) Promotion of the Un-Involved

You've started generating material. You've defined the boundaries, genre and format of your writing project. Now get ready for hurdle #3: Making a lot of words flow.

I’ve seen many writers define their project clearly and even get as far as a detailed outline that is completely ready to draft and then… they hit a wall.

Why aren’t the words coming out?

Reason #1: It’s not the right project. It's completely possible that with every rational reason to write the project you're trying to write, it's just isn't the right project for you right now. (Or maybe ever.)

Solution:

OK, maybe you had some trouble getting started, but now you're beginning to generate material.

Or maybe you're a natural generator, or even an over-producer, and you have too much material.

Is it all even part of the same project? Maybe it’s several different projects. Congratulations, you've just hit Hurdle #2: defining the parameters of your writing project.
 
If your problem is: “I can’t choose between several possible projects”...