Here is this week's blog entry for the Write-a-Book-in-a-Year Club at the high school.  It's great fun to put together these little essays of craft and the writing life for young writers.  The web is filled with so much material to share with them!  For this entry, I cruised over to Louise Marley's web site where I knew I'd find good stuff. 

If you haven't read Louise, you should.  I really enjoyed her short story collection, Absalom's Mother and Other Stories, and I'm looking forward to getting my copy of The Singers of Nevya, which contains three novels.

Here's what I shared with the kids:

The writer Louise Marley, who is also an accomplished singer, wrote about the five lessons she learned from music that apply directly to being a better writer.  It turns out that the practices necessary to improve in music are the same for a author:

• Practice
• Study
• Be professional
• Sing with your own voice
• Persevere

Marley also stresses the importance of discipline for a writer.  As she says, “Discipline always works. An artist without it is doomed to fail. Great talent can draw attention right away; but the application of talent, the training and practice and organization, the honing and development of it, are what make it last. Talent without discipline is like a lightning storm; you never know when, or where, it might strike, and it’s a darned unreliable source of power.”

Read Louise’s entire essay.

Post your thoughts about her advice here