May 23
My biggest pet peeve is when I hear somebody say writing can’t be taught. Of course it can. Maybe it can’t be taught like brain surgery–follow a certain protocol and you’ll have success. But through consistent effort and learning from our mistakes, we can become better writers.
One of my favorite quotes from Terry Gilliam, writer, director, and member of the comedy group Monty Python, reminds me of this fact: Read more
Are you curious about where stories come from? How a writer comes up with a particular idea? I find it energizing to learn the story behind the story.
Some stories come to their authors in a rush, seemingly out of nowhere. Others say, a chance encounter, or an observation of something odd sparked their story. Then as they wrote, the meaning revealed itself and the language and the emotion rose to the surface and drove the story home. Read more
Celebrate Friday with these tidbits of writing advice.
In Revealing Character through Details, Julie Eshbaugh at Publishing Crawl explains her philosophy about expressing character details in fiction and includes several examples.
Then, head over to writer and editor Jane Friedman’s blog to read Perfecting Your First Page: Three Tasks or Exercises.
Sometimes my brain seizes up when I sit down at the computer to write. It’s as if the glare of the screen and the cold, hard keys have drained all the energy out of my ideas. But since I rely on the keyboard and computer to put sentences down on the page, I have to work around it.
So I was intrigued when I read about doodling as a way to boost creativity. Roisin Markham writes about how doodling brings an unconscious clarity to her thinking process.
I’m planning to try it. For all the details, check out Roisin’s post at CreativeDynamix.
Rejection is how we writers grow thick skins, but we can also use it to better our craft. When I first started sending out my memoir, my husband suggested I send it to fifty or so agents right away. Since acceptance can be a numbers game, I understood his logic, but I felt it was better for me to start out slowly. And I’m glad I did. I received excellent, positive feedback early on that made me rethink my story and take my memoir in a new, more exciting direction. Now, I have a book I feel proud of as I begin to send it out again.
But what if you don’t receive helpful rejection letters? What if you get rejection after rejection and aren’t sure where you’ve gone wrong? Jessica Page Morrell, editor, author and writing teacher, has some good tips in her post, “25 Reasons Why Manuscripts are Rejected.”
You can also read my earlier post, “Six Guidelines for Turning Rejection into Success,” for tips on turning those rejections around.
And, if you want to really put rejection in perspective, try the rejection generator.
Do you have any rejection stories you’d like to share?
As someone who is fascinated by the subject of creativity, I’m always looking for other perspectives. Here are a few articles I read this week on the subject.
Have you ever felt like you didn’t fit in or that you’re, “a little weird?” Then you may be interested in this article, Being sensitive, moody and strange may be signs you’re a creative by Susan Biali, M.D. You’ll also see how important it is to follow your creative inclinations.
If you’d like to increase your creative production, check out Seven steps to take now to increase your creative output by Amy Neumann and Eliza Wing.
And in case you missed my post on Monday, you’ll find another idea for enhancing your creativity with the “What if?” exercise.
Yesterday was the last day of National Poetry Month. We had a fun month here in the Pacific Northwest. It seems as if each year, more and more local community organizations get involved in promoting the arts.
Last night, I joined eight other poets for a reading at a local Rotary Club where we were featured in their program. I almost didn’t go to the reading because reading your work in front of other poets who you know is one thing, but reading your work in front of a group of strangers with probably no poetry background is quite another.
But, forcing myself to go fearward, I attended the event and I’m glad I did. We ate great food, had fun, and shared our poetry with others in the community who weren’t familiar with poetry. And, I think we dispelled a few myths about poets along the way: only one poet wore a beret, only one poet wore all black, and nobody dangled a cigarette from their lips while reading (though one poet did read her poem “19 Cigarettes” about when she tried to quit smoking). Read more
onewildword 