Iconoclastic Writer
Currently viewing the tag: "writing"
As a writer I consider words and reading important. But I was also trained in the visual and graphic arts and have longed been attuned to the type and fonts that create the words and make them legible — or not, that can enhance the meaning of the text — or undermine it, that can [...]
Continue Reading →Wow! The beat goes on! Molten meltdown of mental memes send me searching shelves for slender volumes.
I’ve tried reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac three times in my life. I forced myself to finish it last time. But apparently I was reading the wrong Kerouac or the wrong format.
My 1st [...]
Continue Reading →My first Write-O-Rama workshop was “Pare It Down” with Anne Leigh Parrish. A workshop to get us to write simply and therefore strongly. Think Hemingway. Not one of my favorites. Not as pathetically macho as Mailer, but too focused so-called “masculine” values for me.
The idea was to choose strong words; words of one syllable. [...]
Continue Reading →The Write-O-Rama is a full-day smorgsbord of 1-hour workshops run as fundraiser for the Richard Hugo House. I arrived early. You never know about traffic and ferries coming from the Olympic Peninsula. Whenever I’m confident I’ll make a specific ferry that’s when I end up behind a caravan of RVs driven [...]
Continue Reading →In one of those “Be Careful What You Wish For” parables, I’ve spent most of this year being terribly useful. Shortly after I started working on my NaNoWriMo revisions in February, I was hired to fill-in as Interim Executive Director for an area Chamber of Commerce during a particularly nasty internal dust-up. (Bit like the [...]
Continue Reading →John Truby’s screenwriting courses and software are a staple of screenwriting classes worldwide. His book,The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller
, presents his “Twenty-Two Building Blocks” plot structure is a classic. I purchased one of his first video writing courses mumblety-mumblety years ago when I was writing [...]
The plan was to spend January completing the first draft of a memoir and then going back to work on the NaNoWriMo novel revisions. That was the plan.
I did, however, get to work tangentially on writing. A friend asked me to be a beta reader on the first draft of her first novel. She’s [...]
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I’ve seen dozens of variations on story plot arcs through the years (and I’ll be posting at least 3). I read writing books and went to classes and workshops to avoid facing the muddle that was my middle, but somehow Janice MacDonald’s version clicked. I then joined NaNoWriMo in 2007 followed by a friend asking [...]
Continue Reading → Made it! It’s official. I got my 50,000 words (actually, 53,000+ words) at 11:35 p.m. tonight. Must now sleep.
The novel’s not quite done, but the end is in sight and I feel confident I’ll actually make it.
I’ll write more tomorrow.
Continue Reading →I only got a couple of hundred words today because I’m desperately working on writing some training materials for a presentation on Monday. I’m taking a bit of extra effort on the materials because I hope to recycle them on my web site and with other clients, but it’s proving an enormous time and energy [...]
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