The Great Chain of Being in Contact My friend Jane posted this on my Facebook wall: “Had a lovely imaginary conversation with you yesterday, which made me think it’s time for a real one.” As fiction writers, we spend a great deal of time imagining conversations. It’s important that they seem real, but they must […]
The Great Chain of Being in Contact: Guest Blog by James Black! Read More »
In graduate school, I was fortunate to be a student of the late great Lucille Clifton. Not only was she an outstanding poet, but she was an exemplary teacher. And she used her wit and sense of humor to convey so many layers of meaning in her often short poems. She frequently spoke about the
Out loud: by Devi Laskar Read More »
I haven’t felt compelled to write lately. Is that bad? Can I call myself a writer if I’m not brimming with ideas and driven by the need to process every thought in writing? I used to feel that need. I felt compelled. Thoughts zapped into my head and came out my fingers as words in
Keep Verbing Until You Noun: Guest Blog by James Black! Read More »
To continue our discussion of the art of self-sabotage or procrastination, first we have to admit that we, as writers, sometimes want the aura of being a “writer” without any of the suffering that the title entails, all the hard work and self-doubt and isolation of being a writer. In his great book The War
Resistance is Futile! (part ii) Read More »
Writers get writers’ block. Happens to everyone at one point or another. It happens to some writers every day. Take me, for example. I struggle every day. Thanks to a recommendation from an old friend, I’ve been reading Steven Pressfield’s really great book The War of Art, which talks about resistance and how we
Resistance is Futile! (part i) Read More »
During a mentoring call in the Book Writing World, I had a breakthrough about writing detailed scenes, an AHA MOMENT that allowed me to internalize something I’ve known but didn’t quite know-know. Elizabeth’s exercise had us select a character and put him or her in a setting that the writer knows but the character doesn’t.
Show, Don’t Tell: Guest Blog by James Black! Read More »
Let’s talk pitch. It what you “do” when you’re trying to get an agent or editor’s attention regarding your finished book. You know what I’m talking about, the book you spent years on, perfecting, and now’s it’s ready to be read by the world and what’s more, embraced. In the Book Writing World, Elizabeth
Perfect Pitch: by Devi Laskar Read More »
As writers, we are just like Greek mythic sculptor Pygmalion and our books are like Galatea to us. We are attempting to create the most perfect book for our readers. In a recent mentoring workshop in the Book Writing World, Elizabeth drew from the author Gilbert Sorrentino’s piece, “The Moon in Its Flight,” located in
Pygmalion, revisited Read More »
In the Book Writing World, Elizabeth has discussed time and again the “big” ingredients it takes to write a complete narrative/story/book/memoir. Sometimes it can help to put the main ingredients into a single sentence, a sort of pithy recipe. This is different from a PITCH that is used to, well, invite/entice/beg agents and outsiders to
As writers, we sometimes struggle with creating “an inner life” or a range of emotions for our central characters. In an effort to have stories that reflect realistic people with actual problems, we as writers could inflict our obligations and inconveniences on our characters. In a recent Book Writing World mentoring class, Elizabeth instigated an
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