I moved this weekend, rather suddenly. Of course, I’d been thinking and planning the move for a while, but the timing was in question and then suddenly we found the perfect house and got it and started paying rent and so of course we had to move! Moving means, alas, getting everything you want to […]
Packing Books: Worlds, Riches, An Enormous Number of Clowns: by Elizabeth Stark Read More »
I don’t always start a project this way. Sometimes I write about the idea I’m having, or try to write the thing out without doing any planning. Invariably, I come back to making a plan because I get lost. All projects feel too big. I need to break them down. And I need to find
First Steps to a Story: by Angie Powers Read More »
Keep It Simple, Stupid. KISS. That’s the advice I’m dispensing today. There’s no special formula, there’s no potion, there’s no magic. Just work, a few minutes each day, followed by another few minutes the next day, and the day after that. The following advice is free, but if you follow it what I will guarantee
KISS dispensation: by Devi Laskar Read More »
My Book Writing World group was meeting one recent Monday night and it was a reminder that I had committed to write for an hour every day. But I was stalling around: email, online news (Greece gets a bailout! Lindsey Lohan to play Elizabeth Taylor!), computer games, the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. Now
Writer’s Block: by Sandy Olson Read More »
The dog and I enter the park the same way every day and we both like to nose around the new things that come up. We always enter on the corner of Washington and Dekalb, going through the stone and wrought iron entry that flanks the front gardens. The dog always finds something there to
Catch!: by Melanie Lee Read More »
This is a week off in the Book Writing World, a holiday from classes. But of course there is no holiday from writing. Or rather, taking a holiday may be part of the process—you may need time away from the project in order to return to it fresh, with eyes able to make sense of
Rules of the Writing Road: by Elizabeth Stark Read More »
Discoverability. It’s something that people who make video and throw it up on YouTube think about. And it doesn’t matter if it’s some kid in a bedroom in Wisconsin or a corporate committee working for Brawny paper towels. You make a video, you want people to find it easily so they can like it and
Your Authorial SEO: by Angie Powers Read More »
Here’s the trick, here’s the “skinny:” If you love a particular line or phrase, if you’re coddling a particular scene or character, then you have to give these prized precious things a nice shove…into rush-hour traffic. Kill these things, swiftly, with no remorse and move on. It is in human nature to protect something or
Continuing Opposite Day: by Devi Laskar Read More »
The other day I met a woman who had heard about my art a day challenge and wanted to do something creative every day. She is not a self-proclaimed writer, and hadn’t really worked in any fine arts in years. “I spend every day taking care of family, and worrying about what to make them
A savory tale: by Devi Laskar Read More »
My children demand stories of me. They call them “make-up” stories and they do not mean making up from a fight. They mean the battle itself of creating something from nothing, of piecing together characters and throwing problems at them and rallying those characters to take action and imagining the results of that action and
Make-up Stories: by Elizabeth Stark Read More »
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