Nov 28
As winter sets in for many of us, it’s more important than ever to have a plan in place for power outages.
One day last winter, I left my day job to dive into my writing at home. I hoped to interview someone for a project with a looming deadline. As I drove into my neighborhood, I realized the power was out. The sun was beginning to set, so I quickly collected several flashlights and loaded them with fresh batteries. Read more
While I aim to live each day with a spirit of thanksgiving, I love having a holiday to reflect on gratitude.
Expressions of gratitude reinforce the good I see in my life and remind me that the intangible gift of creative passion and the chance to make a difference with words are more important than any material object money can buy.
This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for everyone who has inspired and fueled my writing passion: Parents who supported my aspirations from the very beginning; teachers who didn’t give up on me, including a second-grade teacher who helped me learn to read; and mentors who read my very bad first drafts and still saw the promise of something good. Read more
Sometimes, getting into my writing groove is about as easy as slipping on my favorite pair of jeans from my freshman year in college. In other words, it’s impossible.
I have various tricks for when my muse needs to be conned into action: wearing headphones to help myself focus, doing a five minute timed write to warm up my writing muscles, or giving myself a reward when I reach my word quota for the day—maybe a small piece of chocolate (hmm…is this why I can’t fit into those jeans?).
Sometimes, I write to music to help myself stay focused. For my current project, I’m creating a playlist that so far includes Moonlight Sonata, Adagio for Violin, Bach, and Lorenna McKennitt. While writing my memoir, I listened mainly to Norah Jones and Brandi Carlile. Different books inspire different music and vice versa.
But sometimes other sounds can help me write too. Read more
Do you ever feel like you’ve hit the writing wall and you’re not sure what to do? Relax. Read these posts to reveal a strategy that will put you back on track.
Stuck on what to write about? Consider these big ideas
Do you have a deep desire to write but aren’t sure where to start? Find the answer by asking the right questions. Read more
Sometimes, I don’t like to read another author’s work while I’m writing, other times I do. Since I began writing my current manuscript, I’ve started and stopped several books. But last week I picked up Neil Gaiman’s American Gods
American Gods is a wildly creative and beautiful story. What I love most is how the story is so otherworldly—people coming back from the dead, gods walking around among us—yet feels so absolutely real as if it were playing out in front of me. Read more
How much do you immerse yourself in your characters’ worlds and emotions? The renowned director and acting coach Constantin Stanislavski was known for his theories of method acting, in which he said actors must learn to think and behave like their characters would. As writers, we can also use his system to create more realistic characters on the page.
A fundamental principle of Stanislavski’s teaching is that the actor must live the life of the character that he portrays. This portrayal isn’t limited to the actor’s stage performance but to some degree overlaps into the actor’s life. Stanislavski believed this is the only way to achieve total realism. To reinforce it, he said, the actor must also extend this exercise of imagination to include the clothes, the set and the props. If there is a particular prop that is important, the actor must invent a history of who bought it, where it was purchased, and how it ended up in the setting. This then completes the elaborate imaginary world that will lend conviction to the actor’s performance.
Much of the Method process was about creating a realistic portrayal on stage through acute observations of the world. Method coaches taught students to draw on personal experience as well as their imaginations to reveal their characters’ emotions.
While building a character and creating actions on paper (or computer monitors) may not be the same as an actor playing a character’s role, I’ve tried using elements of method acting to build more fully developed characters. Read more
Nov 15
He’s been writing longer than I am old. In this short video, Ray Bradbury explains the secret to his long career: persistence. He kept writing and kept submitting and each year he doubled his sales of short stories. If you need a quick dose of inspiration and a smile (and not just because of the giant blow-up dinosaur in his living room or his writing snack of beer and cheese) enjoy this video!
onewildword 