Straight talk from the sisters about blood, sweat and ink
Seems as if we were on a love theme last week. A little late, we should have hit this in February! Robin wrote about love archetypes, in her post of the same name, a concept I’d never thought much about when writing a love scene, probably because my lovers develop their character traits as I …
Continue reading “Writing the Love Scene: Part II”
Villains come in as many shapes and sizes as their hero counterparts. The best pairs complement each other. The protagonist’s strengths and virtues contrast against the antagonist’s negative traits. When you take this relationship down to the most basic level, villains all want something and that something is going to cause havoc for the protagonist …
Continue reading “Casting Call: 3 Villains, It’s Good to be Bad”
Rejection sucks. There’s no better word to describe the feeling of just having swallowed a vacuum cleaner hose when: it’s taken you a year to pluck up the courage to phone The Man and ask him to escort you to a gala fundraiser, and he says no, he’d rather go out with Attila the Hun; …
Continue reading “Rejection: Honoring Your Creativity When No One Else Does”
The African bush is never still. Amidst the rustle of leaves and whisper of grass, the grunts and roars and deep cries of predator and prey, herds of elephants roam the landscape within carefully demarcated geographical areas. They congregate at waterholes and snack on a vast menu of delicacies: seeds, roots, fruit, flowers, leaves, branches, …
Continue reading “Friday Inspiration: The Elephant Whisperer”
My first foray into writing led me to an uncomfortable place: writing the love scene— and so I decided to do a little research before I made a total fool of myself. Since it was a YA novel, it was tame compared to what I’ve currently written, but I quickly understood that the elements are …
Continue reading “Writing the Love Scene: Sex or No Sex”
I’m taking a break this week from my Brain Triggers series and returning to the ever-popular Casting Call series. Today I have four characters, each selected from my strange bedfellows category. For the most part these characters fall into a romantic subgroup. Twisted though they may be, these common archetypes work for characters of either …
Continue reading “Casting Call: 4 Archetypes of Lovers With Baggage”
Not so long ago, there were a whole lot of good reasons to go to university and earn a degree. This is increasingly up for debate, what with rising tuition costs, spiraling and unforgiving student debt and increasing numbers of graduates who find themselves armed to the teeth with glossy educations, near perfect GPAs, tons …
Continue reading “Honoring Creativity: What My MFA Taught Me, And What It Left Out”
Last week I read the New York Times Bookends column “Are the New ‘Golden Age’ TV Shows the New Novels?” and got riled up about Adam Kirsch’s opinion, which basically boils down to “how dare TV shows think they are as great as novels!” Well, I feel the need to counter with “how dare you …
Continue reading “Is TV the New Novel?”
Okay, I’m admitting this right up front. I may be making this up. However, I do believe these memories are real. I have a vivid recollection of the first “grown-up” book I read; Heidi, by Johanna Spyri, originally published in 1880 and in German: A tale about a little Swiss girl and her grandfather. I’d …
Continue reading “Friday Inspiration: Homage to Shirley Temple/ Writing Stories with Unabashed Optimism”
I’m an impostor. I know it. And I can’t believe no one’s called me out on it. I pretend to be a writer but I can’t claim erudition when it comes to writing. I’m a student of science and math, the rules of which I’ve studied extensively and understand. I love the rubrics of math. …
Continue reading “Ignorance is Bliss: Breaking Writing Rules, Continued…”