Tag: Writing

Sensory Overload

Show. Don’t tell.

Every person who has ever put pen to paper has heard this line. Don’t tell us we are in Paris, give us the acrid scent of the Seine mixing with buttery croissants, give us the crunch of rough, dusty cobblestoned streets beneath our feet, give us the taste of acrylics on the air from freshly painted street art.

Back to Basics

Think about the book you are writing. Think about the book you want to write. Picture it in your mind, the characters, the setting, the themes, the mood. Is it gritty? Is it lush? Is it joyful? Find yourself in that place, that world, surrounded by those characters. Now, answer this question in one sentence.

SO YOU WANT TO DO NANO?

First of all, congrats! Your interest in doing National Novel Writing Month shows an excitement for writing and storytelling and a willingness to rise to the challenge of writing a whole book in a month!

I haven’t attempted NaNo in three years, but I’ll be doing it with you this year! My NaNo project is the third book in a current series, and I look forward to trying the challenge again, especially after all that I’ve learned as a writer and NaNo-er!

Writing Your Way Out

I may have a little insight into how to reconstruct your book while you are standing in it. Here are a few tips and tricks to starting over from the inside out.

I Don’t Want to Write

Writing is wonderful. It’s like playing God, sculpting worlds, forming new people from nothing but your fingers against the keyboard, giving life to the two-dimensional creations of your own mind, weaving spells of love and pain and the whole spectrum of human emotion.

I love being a writer, but that’s not why I do it.

Thinking Big, Writing Small

Why on earth would you do that? How much of a story can you possibly tell in that short amount of space? Well, for anyone who has read the six-word story by Hemingway, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” you’ll know an awful lot can be said with an awful little.

Here are just a few reasons to give microfiction a try.

House on the Hill

This house, specifically, has called to my baser self for over a year. What does that have to do with writing? Everything.