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Posts from the ‘Writing Life’ Category

Oct 17

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See how these successful authors write

I’m always intrigued by how other writers write. I like to see their routines and quirks. Not only is it entertaining and informative, just maybe, I think, I’ll find something in their process I can adopt to improve my own.

Here are a few tidbits from The Daily Beast’s feature, How I Write.

Michelle Gagnon, mystery writer and author of the young adult thriller, Don’t Turn Around, is a big believer in writing a complete draft before starting any editing. Read more

Oct 15

Productivity tips that will help you find your writer’s path

If you’re like me, making time to write is a juggling act. Last week was one of those weeks that knocked me out of my writing groove in a big way. Changing work schedules, tasks that took longer than planned, and other people’s priorities threw me off.

Sometimes it’s easy to throw ourselves off with tasks we put off doing. These tasks that take on a life of their own can divert us from our writing, take away our energy, and steal productivity from other creative projects. Read more

Oct 11

How do you know when your poem or story is done?

How do you know when your novel, short story, or poem is finished?

I tend to work on a poem over a series of days or months. I’ll come back to a poem in progress days or weeks later and see a word or phrase that didn’t work because I was too close to it the first time I wrote it.

I listen as I read the lines to myself aloud to decide if something doesn’t sound right. If something doesn’t ring true or feels awkward, or if the poem just doesn’t feel complete or whole, I know I’m not done.  Read more

Oct 9

Daydream your way to creativity

My mother tells me that when my brother was in elementary school, she would come home from teacher conferences in tears because she didn’t get a good report from my brother’s teacher. Apparently, my brother wasn’t paying attention in class. He was staring out the window. He was daydreaming.

As it turns out, daydreaming can be a creativity tool. And it has other benefits too. It can relieve stress and lower blood pressure.

Have you ever noticed that when you’re trying really hard to think of how to fix something or move forward in your writing, you just get more stuck and stressed out? Then when you give up and go on to something else, just let your mind drift, the solution pops into your brain? (This works when you’ve lost something too and are trying too hard to remember where you left it). Read more

Oct 8

Use a rolling barrage to help you write your novel via Margaret Atwood

Learn about Margaret Atwood’s creative process in the 4-minute video below. I love her metaphor of using a rolling barrage to help you write your novel. I’ve done this and it works!

Oct 5

Discover your art as you go along

Write something truly awful to find the good stuff. That’s what poet Brendan Constantine promotes in his post “Idle Hands are the Poet’s Playground: Brendan Constantine on Taking a Chance.”

“Furthermore, it will always be true that our poorest work lies ahead of us. We’re going to write something truly awful in the future. We have to. Why do we have to? It’s often the only way to uncover the good writing. Like going through a kitchen drawer, sometimes we have to take out things we don’t need in order to get at the things we do.” Read more

Oct 3

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Author Ian McEwan speaks about one technique for finding novel ideas

Ian McEwan, who wrote Atonement and Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize, describes in this 3-minute video how he develops ideas and finds inspiration for his writing, including a technique he uses to “force ideas.”

McEwan’s most recent book Sweet Tooth: A Novelis a love story, a spy novel, and a book about literature itself.

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