Aug 10
As writers, we don’t want characters who are empty shells, cardboard cutouts. As young adult author Libba Bray says, “You don’t want characters to be blank slates filled in by the reader.”
Author of Beauty Queens
It’s hard to create a plot with interesting twists if your characters are boring and don’t react in interesting ways, she said. So how do you create compelling characters? Try these techniques: Read more
Different cultures throughout time have taught us that naming things gives us power over them. At the recent Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference, New York Times best-selling author, Bob Mayer, spoke on the last day about fear. He started his talk with a quote from Stephen King:
“I’m convinced fear is at the root of most bad writing.”
I’ve taken Mayer’s Write It Forward online class and the first thing he does is have us name our fear. I couldn’t do it. For years, I’ve worked hard on conquering my fears and felt as if I’d pretty much conquered them all (even my extreme fear of snakes). I know all about the concept of “going fearward” and often recommend it to my clients. So when Mayer suggested I probably hadn’t been faced with my current fear yet, I thought, “Uh, huh. Right.”
But there was something wrong in my writing life. I’d been working on my next book and procrastinating terribly but not understanding why. I thought maybe my subconscious was trying to work something out with the plot. But that wasn’t it. Read more
Writing a poem or a paragraph is like solving a puzzle. I seek the perfect word not just for its meaning but also for sound and rhythm. In the process, I stumble upon other words that draw my attention and, before I know it, I’m off on an adventure. Words are like gems, sparkly and seductive in their power.
Priscilla Long, in her book, The Writer’s Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life, says she knows writers who have worked hard for years that do “pretty good work” but have never made the transition to great writing. The reason? Often, these writers—though hard workers—approach language passively. They only use words they grew up with or use in everyday language. Long doesn’t mean that we should suddenly spout elongated Latinate words but that we should become word gatherers, seeking out words that call to us with their sound, texture, rhythm, or meaning. Read more
Children show me how to live in the moment. I’m teaching a creative writing class for kids this summer, and I’m inspired by how they experience life.
One of their assignments was to be detectives. “Observe what is going on around you and write it down in your notebook.”
As if I needed to tell them to be observant.
Adults often talk about stuff and think the kids are just off to the side coloring or playing with a doll or a truck. Think again. Children are sponges and soak up everything you say.
And kids immerse themselves in experiences.
In the last class, I brought out a tin of mints. The children came alive. This was their reaction: Read more
Jul 28
Whether you’re a writer, painter, photographer, or other type of artist, you are a creator, a mini-god, a microcosm of the macrocosm. And you create for a reason. All artists have their reasons. I began creating as a way to answer questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Is there any purpose to my life? Why do things happen the way they do?
These questions are what motivate me to write. In the writing, occasionally, I get answers. There are other reasons why I write—I like to tell stories, to explore relationships and psychology. But my real passion for writing stems from my original questions.
What is your passion? Why do you create? These are important questions every artist needs to answer for themselves. The key, I think, is in the word passion. Read more
In a writing class taught by Nicola Morris, I learned how to be a sculptor of words. As described in part 1 of this post, she had us take a page of completed work and after each sentence, insert two new sentences.
Now that I’d added 66% more words to my masterpiece, it was time to whittle away the unnecessary fat. The first exercise Nikki gave us is called “unpacking.” It’s a good exercise that teaches us to take our time as writers and fully develop a piece. The next trick was to take these unpacked, expanded pages and whittle them down again—leaving only what’s essential. I think of it like packing and unpacking a suitcase—there’s a whole bunch of stuff in there and each item has its own place…I wouldn’t put my bra in the medicine cabinet with my toothbrush would I?
In order to decide what to keep, I ask myself three questions: 1) What is important to me in this piece? 2) What do I want to say? 3) Which sentences are essential to what I want to say? Read more
Writing workshops. Seminars. Weeklong Retreats. Self-help books. MFA programs. Online classes. I’ve done them all. I consider myself a lifetime student of my craft, a connoisseur of writing classes. At first, everything seemed new and fresh—a magical land of writerly ways and secret handshakes. Over time, I learned and grew. I became more selective. I’m still an eager student of the writing craft—I just don’t rush at everything like a new puppy. Still, every once in a while, I find a class that gets my tail wagging again…
One such class, taught by writer and Goddard College faculty member Nicola Morris, was on the theme of re-visioning. We were told to bring a few pages of a completed work to class. Nikki explained that as writers we were either building up our work like a sculptor or breaking down our work like a wood carver.
Our first exercise was to be the sculptor—to take a page of our written work and, after each sentence, insert two new sentences. Excuse me? She wanted me to expand it by two-thirds? How was I supposed to add that much new material to my finished masterpiece? Read more
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