"World is suddener than we fancy it." (Louis MacNiece, "Snow") We've long been warned not to build tension on the cheap by spattering our manuscripts with the word "suddenly." Lately I've read a few posts advising writers not to use the word at all - ever - because it's meaningless. These are posts from editors… Continue reading Suddenly a blog post
Tag: creative process
Friday Fable: The Writers’ Group Driver and his Three Passengers
You may have heard the classic fable, "The Lion and his Three Councillors:" A lion caught a whiff of his own rancid breath and thought, "Maybe I'm not as kingly as I ought to be. I better check." He called to a sheep and asked, "Say, does my breath stink?" "Yes it stinks terribly," said… Continue reading Friday Fable: The Writers’ Group Driver and his Three Passengers
Freewriting
Freewriting is a practice I first learned about in Spilling Ink (A Young Writer’s Handbook by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter). It’s simple: Once a day, begin to write and don’t stop – don’t take that pen off the page or those fingers off the keypad - for five minutes. No thoughtful pauses to get… Continue reading Freewriting
The Beach Bag and the Booker Prize
You may have heard the old story of the Rooster and the Jewel: One day, a rooster was scratching at the straw in the farmyard, looking for nourishment, when he came across a string of pearls (dropped by a wealthy landowner on his way to evict the poor farmer because he couldn't make rent, what with the drought and… Continue reading The Beach Bag and the Booker Prize
Balls in the air
Did you notice the new blog name? I got an email from a total stranger asking if I was still alive and I figured it was time to get back to blogging and Facebook and all that putting-myself-out-there stuff. So here I came. And imagine my surprise when I saw that I'd given myself a deadline to… Continue reading Balls in the air
Catherine Austen 