Can a bad memory be a good thing? “Yes,” says Robert Olen Butler, professor of creative writing at Florida State University. When you’re an artist. In From Where You Dream, he warns: If you are a writer who aspires to create fiction that arrives at the condition of art, your literal memory is your enemy. “Tell your […]
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Manuscript Makeover Mode
I’m in the final manuscript makeover mode, which means my blog has been relegated to second status for awhile. Makeovers and blogs are hungry beasts and quite jealous and suspicious of each other. When they don’t get enough attention (and regular feeding), they go on strike. Immediately. No use in reasoning with them or begging for […]
Steal This List/10 Writing Craft Techniques
Today’s post reflects how lazy (and totally out of ideas) I am, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be rewarded for stopping by. If you’re a fiction writer, that is. Because I’m passing along an article by Janis Hubschman called “Steal This List.” In it, Janis shares ten writing craft techniques that have saved her hours (if not years) of frustration. […]
Shapes of Fiction /The Iceberg / Silver Flats
For an assignment in my Structure and Style class through UC Davis Extension, we were asked to write a scene, using two shapes of fiction as outlined in Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern: Iceberg and Visitation. Stern’s Iceberg shape of fiction shows how to handle thoughts, dialogue, and action in writing. In this shape, the […]
Two People, One Thought / Methodists Sing
As a warm-up for a lesson on Vantage Points in my Advanced Fiction class at UC Davis Extension, our teacher asked us to do a quick-write about two people sharing one thought. This being a quick-write, I didn’t have much time to mull over character or subject, so I zeroed in on the funeral I had attended the previous […]
The Day I met Arnold Schwarzenegger
For a quick-write in my Advanced Fiction Workshop class through UC Davis Extension, I was asked to write a paragraph using one long sentence. Yep, you got it. I was asked to write one big run-on sentence. I just so happened to have met Arnold Schwarzenegger that day, so decided to use that event for inspiration. […]
