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
Last week I, quite spontaneously, decided to participate in the Novel in a Day project. It’s quite an interesting project, which I learned about only a few days before signing up. The inventor and host of the project, whose username is pigfender, plans and outlines a novel of whatever genre he pleases, and then the people who sign up are assigned Continue reading Novel In a Day – A First-timers Perspective
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
I’ve frequently heard (or rather, read) people refer to being a writer as “the loneliest job on Earth”. Maybe there was a time when that was true (although I’m not entirely convinced) but I certainly don’t think it’s true anymore. It seems to be that the plethora of venues, online and offline, for getting to know and collaborating with other Continue reading Lonely no more
Since I’m doing Camp NaNoWriMo a word that’s constantly on my mind is: Goals! I’m talking, of course, about word goals. I’m drafting a novella for Camp and my overall word goal is 30k by the end of the month. This leaves me with a daily word goal of an, in my opinion, reasonably leisurely 1k per day. It doesn’t really Continue reading Games and Goals