Andy Griffiths's Blog, page 15

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Take a tablet for a real page-turner http://t.co/tDi1J1ZI via @smh

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Published on February 09, 2012 15:06

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-02-10

Take a tablet for a real page-turner http://t.co/tDi1J1ZI via @smh #

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Published on February 09, 2012 09:30

Dear Andy …

Dear Andy,

I'm very good at writing and making up stories too. Especially comedy and when I'm acting. My dream is to become a famous actress, director, writer, plasticine animator, critic or anything like that but most importantly NOT to become a loser like my brothers. Sometimes I'm very scared for my future and worried how am I gonna turn out because I'm always feeling that I don't have an example and I haven't done anything "constructive" for my future career, so I'm writing this so you could give me a heads up about what I could do for myself to start me career because … I KNOW NOTHING!!! Perhaps you could tell me how to get discovered without knowing 'people', how to make and publish a book, how actors are hired, how directors show their ideas for a movie etc. I would be very grateful if you could me help me and tell me a thing or two. Thank you 4 reading, Adara

Hi Adara,

Thanks so much for your letter. You have a very strong writing voice—that is, you have the ability to transmit your personality through your writing—and that's a great natural talent.

My advice to you would be to find the thing you like doing the most (whether it's acting, directing, writing, plasticine-animating or a combination of any of these) and then really go into it. Explore it. Practice it. Read about it. Practice it. Look for every opportunity where you can learn more about (eg. books, internet, events, teachers). And did I say to practice it? Well, just in case I didn't: Practice it! It's fairly unlikely you'll get better at a particular skill or artform just by thinking about it … you have to actually do it. In his book 'Outliers', Malcolm Gladwell has studied many hundreds of successful people and found that along the way to mastery of their field they have all put in a minimum of (at the very least) ten thousand hours of practice. So start wracking up those hours as soon and as often as possible.

I got better at writing by setting myself the goal of writing for at least 10 minutes every day in a blank book. Memories, dreams, thoughts … it didn't matter. As long as I kept writing for 10 minutes every day. After a few weeks I found 10 minutes wasn't enough time to get it all down. As writing became easier and easier I found more and more ideas came to me and I had to spend longer and longer periods writing them all down. Ten minutes a day turned into fifteen minutes a day turned into half an hour turned into an hour and many days two hours. You can't fail to get better at something if you practice. Before long I had many notebooks filled with many thousands of ideas, some of which eventually became the basis for the JUST series stories.

Of course you may commit to one thing and eventually find that's it not as fulfilling as you thought. But that is progress. You'll be one step closer to finding the thing that really is yours to do … the one thing you can do better than anybody else. For me it has turned out to be writing funny stories for children. But I didn't know that when I set out. I just knew I liked writing and committed to the process. The more I wrote the more the destination started to present itself. But in the beginning I had no idea where I was going – I just had a sincere desire to find out everything I could about writing and creating stories that would captivate the attention of a reader.

Even if your eventual talent turns out not to be writing, writing is still a powerful tool to help clarify your thoughts and ideas about what it is that you DO want to do. It's a way of being able to 'hear' yourself amidst the endless jumble and torrent of your thoughts. A famous and excellent book on the subject of writing practice that I can whole-heartedly recommend is Natalie Goldberg's 'Writing Down the Bones' (Shambhala Press).

My very best wishes to you, and don't forget to have fun along the way—enjoying yourself in the process is crucial because it will mean that you'll want to come back to whatever you're doing again and again and again. And whether you ultimately become 'famous' or not won't even matter in the end because you'll be getting such enormous fulfillment from the very thing you've chosen to do itself. But you have to go into it deeply and seriously. And you have to practice.

Andy

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Published on February 04, 2012 13:53

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-02-03

Andypedia- it's an encyclopedia, all about Andy! http://t.co/7DS7xrPh #
RT @AndyGBooks: Andypedia- it's an encyclopedia, all about Andy! http://t.co/jlIStKez #

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Published on February 02, 2012 09:30

ANDYPEDIA: It's an encyclopedia … all about Andy

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The Andypedia is a complete guide to every book, every story and every character in the world of Andy Griffiths' books. It's also a complete guide to everything you ever wanted to know about Andy himself – including the answers to questions people are always asking him, like "How old were you when you started writing?" and "How many books have you actually written?" and "Where do you get your ideas from?" and "Did all that stuff really happen to you?" and "Was Danny Pickett really your best friend?" and "Were you really in love with Lisa Mackney?" and "Did your bum really grow arms and legs and run away?"

Available exclusively in digital from February 15, 2012 from all good ebook retailers

Price: $3.99

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Published on January 30, 2012 20:21