Category Archives: Writing
Adventures Around the Web July 2-8, 2017
I’m trying my hand with content curation this week in conjunction with writing in public. Enjoy the stories! Alessandra Codinha in Vogue Magazine Women in the Military: The Female Soldiers on the Front Lines When I look for photos of women on the military websites, I can’t find much. Those available are pretty limited, like …
Writing in Public
Coming in July, I’m going to do a writing in public project. The concept of “writing in public,” comes from science fiction writer Harlan Ellison (if you haven’t read his books, he wrote Star Trek’s “City on the Edge of Forever”). He sat in a window of a store, typed out a story on a …
Coming Attractions for June
This weekend, I made an attempt to see Wonder Woman. But when I showed up an hour in advance at the movie theater, it was sold out except for a few seats in the front. So I’ll try again next weekend. But it’s a good sign … especially for a movie the studio gave up …
Breaking Storytelling with Process
I started writing when I was eight. I loved writing adventures. Before class, I’d get a sheet of notebook paper and write my stories (and sometimes when I was bored during class). My friends loved reading the stories, and I had several who got involved by drawing pictures. That was just too cool. Pictures can …
Editing vs. Revising vs. Rewriting
I’ve been taking a workshop on Editing Yourself. It’s not the first workshop I’ve had like this; I had another one called Keys to Editing, which covered the topic if you wanted to go in business as an editor. The Editing Yourself is very different from that one. The editing class is on essentially taking …
Golden Retriever Writing Process
This week, I started Dean Wesley Smith’s writing workshop on “Editing Yourself.” One of the things I had to do was think about how to describe my writing process. The first thing I thought of was this video:
What does a character look like?
Whenever I’m reading a book, it’s hard for me to put a face to the character if the writer doesn’t describe anything. I know there’s a crowd that says to leave it off, leave it up to the reader’s imagination or imagine herself. I don’t imagine myself in the character’s place. If I don’t get a …
Moving Around in the First Draft
One of the most appalling things I’ve seen in writing is the piece of advice spoken everywhere: “All first drafts are crap!” It’s often accompanied by the advice to write your first draft straight through and not go back and fix anything until you get to the revision. Craft Thoughts has an article on why …
Defining Success as a Writer
I came back from the cruise and broke my right foot in Florida. I was coming down a steep wheelchair ramp in the Everglades. It had this small speed bump at the end. I stepped on it, my ankle over-rotated, and I fell. The outside of my foot slammed into the speed bump. It’s a …
