writing techniques | writing techniques
Oct.26.2012
A friend of mine told me she was getting frustrated with her writing class and wasn’t sure she was going to stay with it. Students were told to outline the whole book before the instructor let them start, and he’d just rejected her fourth outline. She was itching to begin chapter one. She wasn’t...
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Sep.28.2012
Every month of every year, publishers pop out more creative writing books than any creative writer could possibly read. Many of these offerings are solid, providing sound, useful advice; others are rehashed versions of old information; and a few too many are simply drivel. But on this Great Stuff...
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Sep.27.2012
From Writing as a Sacred Path:
The next time you find yourself in a crowd, focus for one moment on some small thing. In the crush of a department store, spend a moment watching a little girl holding a doll. On a packed commuter train, focus on the play of light on the windows. Stuck in...
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Sep.22.2012
Thursday night, I went to a talk by one of my colleagues, the brilliant Geri Chavis. A licensed psychologist with a Ph.D. in Literature, Geri is an international leader in the area of poetry and story therapy. She’s written a number of books on writing and healing, including most recently, ...
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Aug.07.2012
Considering that we start learning it at birth, master it almost completely by four, and use it every day of our lives, it’s surprising how little people know about language. Even among writers, who should know better, misconceptions abound. When I’m not being a writer, I’m an...
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Jul.23.2012
Greetings. If you're new to the blog, I've been writing from Italy for the past two weeks. I'm now at a workshop for recorder at the Italian Foundation for Early Music in the little city of Urbino. Join me!
My workshop is set up so that each student has a 45-minute lesson every other day. In...
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Jun.07.2012
One of the easiest things to write badly is emotion, which is ironic considering it’s pretty much the whole point of creative writing. Long after a writer has learned to create interesting characters, construct strong plots, invent believable settings, and come up with convincing dialogue,...
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Dec.31.2011
I am not now, nor will ever be, one of those people who would watch the Academy Awards just to see what the stars are wearing. Nor would I flip to an article written by the "fashion police" entitled Best and Worst Dressed. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that when...
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Nov.01.2011
If there's one proven technique to effectively talk to people, it's through use of metaphor-- it was already ancient when a former carpenter used it extensively in what we call "parables," and it's just as effective today.
Case in point: the essay below by Niall Ferguson-- who speaks of "...
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Jun.25.2011
Writing groups can be the arena for blood sports: as correspondent Dave notes, the critique-carnage can be horrific...
DAVE Writes: "Question: should a proper character act like “normal” people, or may a character act like the one the author has in mind?
I often find that in our groups’...
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