Like that one guy said: Good writers borrow, great writers steal. Welcome to the place where all things have been lifted, looted, and otherwise pilfered…Remember, possession is 9/10s of the law.
The story is that Edith Wharton wrote in bed. Whenever she would finish handwriting a page, she would drop it on the floor. Later, her secretary would gather up the sheets of story and type them. One must have a method. Despite the —… Continue Reading “Writing in Bed”
As a writer, I fly solo. That’s kinda the name of the game. The decisions made are mine and mine alone. It’s me and the keyboard, my imagination, and whatever command of language I happen to have at the time. If I want to… Continue Reading “Different Arts, Different Behaviors”
I’ve been a slacker with writing lately. First, the novel group went on hiatus, which removed my constant impending deadline. Then, I was looking for a new job, which sucked up oodles of time. Then, I was moving for the new job and doing… Continue Reading “Chain Chain Chain”
Okay, here’s a great little interview from Big Think, asking Margaret Atwood all those questions that we writers love to ask other writers…especially those more successful or smarter than us. Something interesting that struck me in her methodology was the ‘rolling barrage’ – because… Continue Reading “Margaret Atwood on Her Creative Process”
In honor of Kerouac, and in attempting to learn what I can about writing from him, I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon trying to create my own scroll-of-fiction. First, I gathered my paper (10 sheets…my thought process being that ten sheets of… Continue Reading “The Great Scroll Experiment!”
A book was recently released called Agatha Christie’s Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making, by John Curran. Check out Curran’s deal: he got to spend hours in a room, pouring over handwritten exercise books, reading page after page of difficult notes, deciphering… Continue Reading “Notebooks!!”
Deciding to plunge forward on a frustrating piece is one of the most difficult, and most common, decisions a writer must make. If a character isn’t cooperating, if a POV isn’t functioning, if there’s that intangible something telling you that the piece is suffering,… Continue Reading “Your Form is Showing, or Is It?”