Writing
The City Our Writing Teacher: Success as Disintegration
by Mary Rakow We see disintegration in the city all the time. New objects become trash. Dumpsters fill up and are emptied. Streets are torn up, sewer lines replaced. Cars fall apart, are repaired. But we shy away from disintegration because it’s scary. We can’t control it. We don’t know where it’s going. And as…
Read MoreTHE CITY OUR WRITING TEACHER—Fidelity/Place of Refuge
By Mary Rakow There’s a reason why writers, composers, architects and mathematicians wander a lot. When creative people are “in the zone” and we get out, we stop thinking directly about our project. And that’s when we see our teachers everywhere! Bar, beauty parlor, church. This happens because workshops, editors, conferences are all wonderful resources…
Read MorePlanning your novel? Or pantsing?: The eternal battle of logic vs. intuition
by Grant Faulkner I’m often asked whether a writer should plan their novel—or how they should plan their novel— or, if they plan their novel, how much they should plan their novel, and many other questions about planning, pantsing (writing by the seat of your pants), and plantsing (somewhere in between planning and pantsing). It’s…
Read MoreTHE CITY OUR WRITING TEACHER: BUILDING A CITY OF THE HEART
by Mary Rakow Building a City of the Heart is about connecting. Last time I wrote about coming undone. We all do, at some point. When one of the group finds life too much to bear and takes his life, you gather. Les was the author of three novels, “The Last Bongo Sunset” (1995), “Slow…
Read MoreMaybe you’re not stuck: 5 solutions for writers block
Do you ever find yourself saying that you feel stuck? Or blocked? Maybe you are. But maybe something else is going on. Take Bee, who said she’d scheduled two hours to write only to sit at her computer for two hours, staring, thinking, writing nothing. I suggested Bee commend herself for taking that time at…
Read MoreGo Beyond 5 Senses in Your Fiction Writing
by C. S. Lakin Fiction and nonfiction writers alike need to immerse their readers into the story they are telling, and the best and most obvious way to do this is by utilizing sensory detail. While most of us have been taught that there are five senses, there are actually more than twenty specific senses…
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