I live with a character flaw that I cope with on a daily basis. It drags me down, sometimes to the edge of despair, like a lead weight tied around my waist. I know I’m not alone; most of my writers friends suffer from the same ailment. There is solidarity in our struggle — an [...]
Category > Inspiration
Fire it up! A writing exercise
Last week, Christie talked about using timed writing exercises to restart your creative fires. Here’s a similar exercise that you can use to jolt yourself out of a rut. It’s based on Kerouac’s Spontaneous Prose method. You may have tried something similar in a writing class–I know I have. Find an object to study. Maybe [...]
Invincible Convictions
What are your most deeply held personal beliefs?No, you don’t have to tell me in the comments section below (unless you really want to), but take a moment to think about it. Chances are a few gut reactions will boil up to the surface of your thoughts. “I’m a liberal.” “I’m a conservative.” “I believe [...]
Write-Brain Exercises
I spent the last two weeks with sixteen other writers under the tutelage of Walter Jon Williams and Nancy Kress at the Taos Toolbox workshop. I probably should’ve planned ahead to have my Inkpunks post ready for today before I left. Alas, I did not have that foresight. At the moment I’m a little (make [...]
Capturing the Essence: Gesture Drawing for Writers
Not too long ago, I took an informal class on the art of storyboarding. (I say informal because my buddy was going to be teaching an online class and he needed some guinea pi-, er, volunteers to help him on the trial run.) I learned a hell of a lot about the underlying principles of [...]
Why do we write?
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about why I write, or why I started writing in the first place, because over time, these two concepts may diverge. An insidious thing can happen: you can lose sight of what you love about the act, and get caught up in the business of writing: wanting to make [...]
things I got from the surrealists
Recently I went to LA to go on an art date with some friends. We went to this show: In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and The United States. (More about the exhibit at the LA Times, the Huffington Post, and by our own Andrew Penn-Romine.) It was an amazing, thought [...]
Boldly Going Where Everyone Has Gone Before
I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek lately. A LOT of Star Trek. Ever since Netflix secured the rights to stream the whole enchilada, I’ve been (re)enjoying the voyages of the starships Enterprise, Enterprise, Voyager, and Enterprise (and the Defiant). One of the things I’ve noticed on my return trip through the Star Trek [...]
The World According to Lou
Lou Anders is the editorial director of Prometheus Books’ science fiction and fantasy imprint Pyr as well as several anthologies. He’s been nominated for multiple awards multiple times, including the Locus Awards, Shirley Jackson Award, Philip K. Dick Award, Chelsey Award, World Fantasy Award and the Hugo Award. He’s won the Chesley Award and [...]
Conversations
This is not a post about writing dialogue. Last weekend, I caught up with an old friend over dinner. We first met in a now-defunct writers’ group, back when I first had an inkling I might want to give this whole writing thing a shot. As one of my first beta-readers and original fans, I [...]
