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.
Greek to me. After three months of working, I’ve finished the draft of the gender-reversed adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that I’ll be directing throughout October and November. (We open in December! If you’re in Colorado Springs, you need to come see this!) And let me tell you this about adapting the Bard-His-Own-Self… It’s…
Writers are over-the-shoulder readers. If there is a writer sitting next to another writer, odds are that one or the other will look over their compatriot’s shoulder and peek. There are millions of reasons for this. First, most writers (the real ones) are readers. If words are on a page, then the words must be…
Read more Reading Over the Shoulder: A Thing I Wrote While Writing With Friends at Poor Richards
Rabih Alameddine’s novel I, the Divine is a novel told entirely in first chapters. As a reader, the whole-novel-as-first-chapter concept put me in an immediate state of: What do I have to follow here? (The answer is: Sarah’s life. It wasn’t as difficult a read as I thought it would be. Alameddine flows the first chapters…
Hello writer-friends. It’s Tuesday, which means that it’s time to be accountable…which I wasn’t last Tuesday. Quick reason for no posting last Tuesday: My grandmother died on March 31. It was rather an emotional week that manifested some strange things. The first of which – Last Monday (the Monday after her death) I decided to go…
There’s a list Kerouac jotted down that is often copied. Called “Belief &Technique for Modern Prose,” it is thirty pieces of advice for writers who want to write spontaneously and Beat-like. A couple of my favorites tidbits: #1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy (because I love the idea of…
This weekend, I finished reading The Dharma Bums – the book that apparently started the Backpack Revolution. First, My Problem: As the title implies, there are a plethora of Eastern-religion references throughout Dharma Bums. My problem was, and remains, that I had the toughest time believing Ray Smith, the main character, really understood the tenets…
Good Blonde by Jack Kerouac My rating: 3 of 5 stars Best part about this book: The sections where Kerouac talks his writing style. There are two selection/chapters that cover this “spontaneous prose”: “The Essentials of Spontaneous Prose” and “Belief & Technique for Modern Prose.” Both are kind of checklists; but how-to lists might be…
Read more Thursday Reviews!: Good Blonde and Others by Jack Kerouac (A Mentor Review!)
“Gravitas” is one of my husband’s million dollar words when he’s offering a critique. It’s a tricky word to digest when it’s thrown at you like: “This needs more gravitas.” He’s much more eloquent but, I mean, what can you do with that? Generally I take it to mean that the stakes aren’t sufficiently high…
Well, kids, that’s it for Agatha Christie. I hope that you found something interesting to use for your own work from this bestsellingest of authors. Stuff that I’ll take away: 1. You don’t have to be all organized in your notebooks. I know that seems like a really silly thing to take away, but I…
Okay, so I’ve decided to add in this as a new blog feature. I’ve been doing Random Posts of Accountability…but I realized that I only posted those when I had done something. (Was I gonna post about doing nothing? Don’t think so.) Now, every Tuesday you will be subjected to regaled by the writing progress…
