Rules of Magic A couple of years ago, a fellow blogger and I discussed writing guest posts for each other. She writes in the combined fantasy/urban legend genre and hoped I could write a post about magic or how place contributes to a story. I decided to do it on how every story has rules,…
You know that feeling: itchy fingers, voices in your head, ideas backing up, the urge to sit and type like a maniac through a scene, a tirade of dialogue, a well-strung motif? That’s where I am at, about to break out in a rash of words. But there is a hold, the ever present disruption…
My last post was about brainstorming with my writer pal Marcy on a novel idea involving dementia and Alzheimer’s. Much of what is going into the book is based on my experience with my mother and my father-in-law who are both suffering from this kind of memory loss. Every phone call I have with them…
Since I am often inundated with numerous obligations I cannot put off because they are important aspects of my income-producing job, I need a few tricks to galvanize creativity. I have already written about several of them, but my most trusted approach to getting off the pot and onto the page is very simple. I…
What if she was real a moment ago? It is the What Ifs that writers bring into reality. What if kids had to fight to the death to earn a position in society? What if everybody was altered to fit into one of five personality types? Questions and possibilities are what we build our stories…
Creativity: Uses your whole brain. In the past the right brain was established as “conceptual, holistic, intuitive, imaginative and non-verbal” according to the Scientific American article “Is it true that creativity resides in the right hemisphere of the brain?” It was later replaced by the whole-brain theory which is covered by Ned Herrmann who wrote…
Be ready to pounce on the writing moment. So last week I blogged about how creativity can be dependent upon routine. I do use this to a degree during the summer months, but I am just as likely to use the capture mode. This is when you sit down to do one thing and inspiration…
Be ready to write Creativity is such a personal experience. No matter who we are, we search for it. A kid wants to say something funny to his buddies, a man needs a good line to catch the woman’s attention, a painter dreams of that perfect aesthetic impression on canvas, the computer programmer must revise…
