August 18
Do you feel validated?
Imagine someone you knew did this for you on a daily basis. Imagine you were someone for someone else.
read more
October 25
Why the world needs you to write
Moments are slippery things. We can record them, but there’s no true way to relive them. A ratty T-shirt that smells like your old boyfriend is not your old boyfriend.
read more
October 11
Guest post: Yanking the door open
What makes an editor know on the first page whether she will like the story? Look over your work and answer the following questions.
read more
September 25
Ever found Neil Gaiman in your falafel?
Flipped the channel to the public television station and left that on for background morning chatter. The first thing I saw was a mini Neil Gaiman. Dispensing writing advice. From within a falafel.
read more
June 21
Have you heard the story of astronaut pens? At the dawn of the space program, NASA encountered a sticky problem. They discovered that ball-point pens would not work outside of our atmosphere. The government quickly went to work developing a special new pen which could write upside-down, at any temperature from freezing to boiling, on any surface known to man, at any pressure, and in zero gravity. People were hired and ideas were considered, developed, tested, discarded, and considered again. Hours of research went into the project, and it was made top priority in the department. It took many manhours and twelve billion taxpayer dollars to come up with the space pen, but NASA finally got it down. Whew. Crisis averted. The Russians, of course had the same problem. So they used pencils. Okay, fine… truth be told, this is just an urban legend. It never really happened. But it’s still a perfect metaphor for the plot problems you might be having. Are you wrestling with why your protagonist would feel the need to serve as whistleblower on his company when he’s been working there happily for twenty-five years with no issues? Does it not make sense that the daughter would fall in love with the gardener upon whom the whole rest of the story hinges? Do you have a handful of stubborn characters who just won’t do what you tell them? Forget them. Don’t get so stuck in your path that it becomes a rut. It’s your path, your story. You can make up whatever the heck you want. Just write it another way and see what sticks. Assuming you aren’t staring down some giant deadline (and really, even if you are), what’s the worst that could happen? You write something in a totally different direction, and toss it later to return to your original idea? What’s the loss there? That your creative juices are now flowing and you pushed the stubborn what-ifs out of the way? That you ignored some formula or outline that obviously wasn’t working so well anyway? Standing still is never a good idea. Keep it moving. Even if it’s in a direction you don’t like. Even if the idea seems so freakishly simple that it sounds stupid at first thought. Let it go, and write something on the page. You can always go back later and fix it. Who’s going to read it if you’re unhappy with it in the end? Easy: no...
read more
Magic space pens and secret answers
March 22
Editor’s Note: During a conversation thread on author R.J. Keller‘s Facebook timeline, I was intrigued by fellow writer April Hamilton‘s take on a Youtube video featuring a few acting tips from Mandy Patinkin. He’s one of my all-time favorite actors, so I was hooked already, and I loved hearing him speak so passionately. But when April started relating his tips to writing, I knew she was on to something, and I asked her to write a guest post. Below is her text (and then the video.). Writing help can come from the most unlikely sources. I recently saw a video where actor and Broadway star Mandy Patinkin was being interviewed about his experiences with The Princess Bride film. At one point in the interview, he talks about how, as an actor, he learned to boil down every scene he played to one word or a single sentence and use that as his grounding, or guiding principle for performing the scene. It occurred to me that writers can do the same thing when writing or editing scenes: distill the scene down to a single word or phrase that conveys the point of the scene (e.g., a specific action, a feeling, an incident that must occur, a reveal, etc.) and use that as a yardstick and delimiter. In other words, if the point of a given scene is to convey a character’s insecurity about something, then the word is “insecurity,” and as you write or edit, you can use that as a guidepost for what does or doesn’t need to be in the scene / does or doesn’t serve the point of the scene. This could work very well to help keep a scene on-point, and might save a writer from having to cut a lot of extraneous material during the editing phase if it’s employed during the drafting phase. This tip can also prevent or cure the dreaded “sagging scene syndrome” — in which a scene just seems to lose its focus or pace partway through, but the writer can’t tell precisely where it went wrong. I’d suggest that any writer who struggles with writing “tight” give this method a try. It may turn out to be the quick and (relatively) easy fix you’ve been looking for! April L. Hamilton is an author and the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat.com, as well as being Editor in Chief of Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily and Digital Media...
read more
Guest post: Mining a writing tip from Mandy Patinkin
February 19
Simplicity challenge
From the far corner of the living room, our four-year-old G piped up and said, “We should get rid of all my toys, too. I don’t really need them.” So, we did.
read more
August 18
A boy and his pillow casket
He sits in it all the time. Usually, it’s an alien spaceship or a Pokémon ball or a house or a bed. Today, it was the casket for his baby-doll’s father. (So… him.)
read more
January 11
The secret lives of real books: Video insanity!
Know what happens in a bookstore at night once everyone has left? This is awesome.
read more
December 24
A Christmas wish for writers
Optimism and faith. Maybe they’re the same. Whatever be the names of the things that make us stronger, make us better, make us stretch into whoever it is we’re becoming, I wish them all for you.
read more
