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Monday, December 5, 2022

Ten Writing Tips from Shrek Writer Joe Stillman #tipsforwriters #Shrek #JoeStillman

From the writer of "Shrek" comes "The Man Who Came and Went," a magically realistic novel about a grill cook who can mind read orders, and a small town diner that changes lives. 


1. Be willing to write bad. No one writes good before writing bad. In other words, be willing to suck for a while. You’ll need to suck before you learn your craft. You’ll need to suck once you’ve learned your craft too, even if you’re writing as a pro. Good writing almost always follows bad writing. Writing is rewriting.

2. The best way to know if you should be a writer is by how much you WANT to write. If sitting down with your pad or computer feels like home, then you’ve got as much a claim to be a writer as anyone in the world.

3.  When the voice in your head says you suck, keep writing anyway. Generally that voice comes up, not because you suck, but because you fear others will think you suck. Not writing is simply your mind’s solution for avoiding that pain: if you don’t write, no one will see your work or be able to criticize you. At least that’s how the mind sees it. Just know this: it is by far better to suck and to be told you suck, then give up on your dreams out of fear. Sucking beats not trying by a million miles.

4. Expect to fall in love with your work. These words or some variation will probably form in your head. “I am the best writer ever. People will read this and know that. Everyone who ever didn’t love me will now know I’m really wonderful.” Don’t hate yourself afterwards, when you read over what you’ve done and realize it’s not as good as you thought. And don’t hate others when they don’t love it as much as you. Every writer falls in love with their work, unreasonably so. Which is why…

5. Be willing to realize that what you’ve created isn’t necessarily the best thing in existence. It doesn’t mean you suck. No one gets anywhere without killing some ideas. All writers fall in love with their own work. Good writers are willing to see past that and look to let go of what’s not working as well.

6. Be skeptical. Of people who adore your work. Of people who deride your work. Of yourself when you think you suck or think you’re great. Everything we do is a work in progress, including your writing. To that end:

7. Find people who will give you feedback on your work. And take it all with a grain of salt. Knowing how to sift through feedback to glean what’s useful is itself an art form. Become that artist. It will help you enormously.

8. Distance is almost as good as working. Stepping away, putting the pen down, coming back later, taking breaks, all this is as important to your writing process as writing.

9. Don’t feel bad if you need to put down a project. Not all ideas are really able to sustain a full story. Even an idea you love initially may not have “legs” or the potential to be a fully realized venture. By the same token:

10.  Don’t be afraid to keep at a story against all common sense and long after others think you’re out of your mind. My new novel, “The Man Who Came and Went,” began as a screenplay that I wrote and rewrote for over 25 years. I had come to feel like the world’s biggest loser for keeping at it. Objectively, I might have been just that. But pivoting from screenplay to novel brought the story to what I had been after all that time. Keeping at it is sometimes the thing to do.


The Man Who Came and Went 
Joe Stillman

Genre: Magical Realism / Mature YA / Literary Fiction
Publisher: City Point Press
Date of Publication: 3/1/22
ISBN: 9781947951389
Number of pages: 240
Word Count: 64,000
Cover Artist:  Barbara Aronica-Buck and Susan Stillman

Tagline:  
A grill cook who mind-reads orders.  
A diner that changes lives.
Tips appreciated. 

Book Description:

Fifteen year old Belutha Mariah, our storyteller, is the oldest of three kids from three different fathers. Her life’s goal is to keep her dysfunctional mom, Maybell, from procreating yet again and then to leave the coffin-sized town of Hadley, Arizona the second she graduates high school. 

Along comes the new grill cook at Maybell’s Diner, Bill Bill, a mysterious drifter with the ability to mind-read orders. As word spreads, the curious and desperate pour into this small desert town to eat at Maybell's. Some believe Bill knows the secrets of the universe. Belutha figures he’s probably nuts. 

But his cooking starts to transform the lives of locals and visitors, and Belutha finds her angry heart opening as Bill begins to show her the porous boundary between this life and what comes after.

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Excerpt

            That day, the day Bill arrived, my mom was serving up eggs and complaints.

            “Dammit, that daughter a mine,” she yelled to Dolene, across the diner. Shes like walking birth control. Does she think Im trying to have babies? Scuse me, Darlin’” Maybell gave Clovers bubble walker a little kick, sending it between tables 4 and 6 so she could get by and dump a load of dishes behind the counter.

            Dolene was homegrown, like the tumbleweed, with eyes like a golden retriever that never quite looked at you directly. She was smart enough to add up a check, but you could tell she was never getting out of Hadley. I take it you didnt get laid last night.”

            Maybell pointed to her sour puss. Does this say laidto you?”

            There was a harrumphfrom booth 5 by the window. That was Rose. Rose was an old woman by the time she was 30. Now she was in her late 60s, a widow since before I was born—in other words, forever. She liked to spend her afternoons at Maybells Diner, reading her book and keeping an eye on the goings on around her, as if she was the towns homeroom teacher.

            “Look at Saint Rose,” Maybell said, stuffing dirty plates into the plastic tub under the counter. Thinks she smells better than Mentos. I aint running a library here, Rose. Next time bring Readers Digest!

            There was another sound from Rose, something between a welland a pfffft.She never took her eyes off her book.

            The door opened with a DING from the bell that hung on it. No one noticed Bill entering. He was about average in height, but his skinny frame made him look taller. You could tell from his face that he was in his mid-20s, but those were hard years he had lived, and his body looked frail and geriatric. His clothes were old and clung to him like an extra layer of skin, with a smell that would never wash out.

The angles of his face were sharp and careworn. But his eyes, those were different. His face was hard and weathered, but his eyes were soft. They seemed brand new.

No one in the diner even looked. If they did they would have seen those eyes taking in every little detail: the people talking, forks carrying food, the string lights behind the counter, Dolene ringing up a check. But what drew Bill more than anything else was the grill. Harley, the grill cook, must have had four meals going at once, each with its own set of sounds and smells. Most of those meals involved eggs. His spatula made a metal-on-metal scrape as he turned them. Bill was riveted. He went to sit at the counter to watch.

            Down the counter, a porkish-looking man named Earle—probably one of three men in town who had never slept with my mom—raised his empty cup. Can I get a refill, Maybell?”

            Maybell stopped and faced him. Seriously, Earle? Is it so goddam much trouble for you to get up off your ass and get it yourself? Cant you see Im working here?”

            “Well…” he stammered. I just—was I—I was—”

            Maybell pointed to the coffee pot. How far away is that? Two feet?”

            “Sure, I guess…”

            “Am I your personal slave, Earle? Is that why God put me on earth?”

            “No, I dont think youre—”

            Maybell grabbed the pot and sloshed coffee in his Earles cup. There. You happy now?”

He nodded meekly.

            While she had the pot in her hand, Maybell filled the cup sitting in front of Bill. Ill be by to take your order in a minute, hon.”

            Maybell walked on. Bill just sat there and stared at the coffee. For him, there was no diner anymore, no Maybell, no clanking dishes or dumb conversation. He leaned closer to that cup like it was the only thing in the world. And there he was, smelling coffee for the first time. And it smelled like life. Like a whole world. Like this is how a planet smells if youre up in space and could take a deep breath. Bill was motionless for who knows how long. And then, when he was good and ready, he took his first sip.

            Those eyes, the ones that didnt belong on his head, they closed as if he was praying. No, more like he was hearing a prayer. The coffee was praying to be heard, and Bill heard it.

 

About the Author:

Joe Stillman co-wrote “Shrek” for Dreamworks which earned him an Academy Award® nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Annie and BAFTA Awards.  Other produced features are “Beavis & Butthead Do America”, “Shrek 2”, “Gulliver’s Travels”, “Planet 51” and “Joseph King Of Dreams”. 

In television, he was co-producer and writer on “King of the Hill,” for which he received two Emmy Award® nominations. He was a writer and story editor for Nickelodeon’s “The Adventures of Pete and Pete” and a writer on MTV’s “Beavis and Butthead”. More recently he worked on Nickelodeon’s “Sanjay And Craig” and “Kirby Buckets” for Disney. Other TV credits include “Albert” for Nickelodeon, “The War Next Door” for the USA Network, “Clueless”, “Doug” and “Danger And Eggs” for Amazon.

Joe is currently working on “Curious George” and “Half-Baked 2” for streaming on Peacock.










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