It’s now been over a year since I started working with One Year to a Writing Life. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, I’ve worked through all 12 chapters so I thought it was time to summarize my general impressions of the book here. But first, I’ll talk briefly about the last chapter, called Writing the Way Home. I had trouble getting into Continue reading One Year to a Writing Life – General Impressions + December
With all the excitement of NaNoWriMo, I nearly forgot that I hadn’t posted about chapter 10, which I worked with during October, of One Year to a Writing Life. The title of the chapter was Memoir and Mosaic which I found both intriguing and off-putting. Intriguing because… well, mosaics rock. And off-putting because writing a memoir is not something I’ve ever Continue reading One Year to a Writing Life – October – Memoir and Mosaic
So, the chapter from One Year to a Writing Life that I did in September was called The Alchemy of Writing. It was a bit of a weird one. It was about finding an idea and turning it from a little nugget into a story through a series of steps. It started, like the earlier chapter on dreams and writing, with Continue reading One Year to a Writing Life – September – The Alchemy of Writing
It’s already a good bit into September, but I had some trouble finishing the last exercise from the eighth chapter of One Year to a Writing Life. The chapter was entitled Poetic Prose and the Prose Poem and dealt, quite obviously, with the prose poem and poetic elements in prose. I enjoyed this chapter and the exercises quite a bit, in Continue reading One Year to a Writing Life – August – Poetic Prose and the Prose Poem
The chapter from One Year to a Writing Life that I worked on during the month of July was entitled Tales: Folk, Fairy and Contemporary. It was a fun chapter to read which talked about the form and function of the tale and how it’s only fairly recently become something meant “for children”. It also features a contemporary tale by Lynne Continue reading One Year to a Writing Life – July- Tales
So I was lying on the sofa earlier, playing some Panda Jam and chilling out, when it suddenly dawned on me that I never posted my writing exercises for June. Gasp! So I am doing it now. Chapter 6 of One Year To a Writing Life is about Dialogues. It was a really interesting chapter, and perhaps the most useful one for Continue reading One Year to a Writing Life – June
So, the fifth chapter in One Year to a Writing Life is about dreams and writing. That was a bit of a change of pace from the previous chapters, and since I’ve been in the habit of writing down my dreams (provided they are interesting and/or I can remember them coherently enough) I was curious about what the exercises would be Continue reading One Year to a Writing Life – May
Boy, did it take me a while to get around to writing this post! I was a bit burnt out on blogging after the A to Z challenge, I think. Anyway, through some miracle I managed to do the Chapter 4 exercises from One Year to a Writing Life during April in spite of said challenge and Camp NaNoWriMo. They are, admittedly, Continue reading One Year to a Writing Life – April – The Short Story and the Short-short
Well, April is turning out to be quite the busy month for me, so I thought I’d better hurry and get this post up so I don’t forget. The third chapter in One Year to a Writing Life, which I worked through during March, featured opinion pieces and travel essays. There were 4 exercises. Simply put they consisted of drafting Continue reading One Year to a Writing Life – March – Opinion Piece and Travel Essay
The second chapter in A Year to a Writing Life features the personal essay. This is a genre I haven’t had much experience with, unless you count blogging and those tedious “What did you do during the summer break?” assignments they kept giving me at school. The exercises in this chapter were quite different from in the first chapter. Instead of Continue reading One Year to a Writing Life – February – Personal Essay