My wife turned our laptop around the other day and showed me this photo and said, “You should write about this.” So, first, the photo, and then the writing. And then, the exercise. People think I do this for money. I put out a box and I don’t object when people drop money in it. Continue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Photo story”
Category Archives: Writer's Notebook
A Writer’s Notebook: Our Band Could Be Your Lit
This week the writer’s notebook will get delayed. That’s not because I’m not working, but because I’m working toward something. I’ve agreed to write a guest-blog story for Our Band Could Be Your Lit, so I’m using this week’s Notebook to work on that. But the story won’t get posted until Sunday (and probably won’tContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Our Band Could Be Your Lit”
A Writer’s Notebook: Revision checklist
Today’s exercise is going to be short and relatively uncreative. I’m polishing up a story collection I recently finished, and while most of the stories are published, finished, or well on their way, one is still very much an ugly draft, so I’ve decided to go over that weakest story and do some broad revision.Continue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Revision checklist”
A Writer’s Notebook: “Uninvited Guests”
Like my early Writer’s Notebook entry “1,000 words,” this exercise requires I post a picture. This picture, though, comes with a title and a caption, which I’ve included with the pic at the right (for the full citation, see the end of the story). Children’s lit fans might recognize the title of this post and/orContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: “Uninvited Guests””
A Writer’s Notebook: Prose haiku
Technically, this is just a very short short-short, the flashiest of flashes (to borrow a phrase from Rowan Atkinson in Love Actually), but I’ll explain below why I call it a “prose haiku.” She sat on a thick window sill outside the store and tucked into tiny chicken wings, so small they looked like friedContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Prose haiku”
A Writer’s Notebook: “Casting a Wide Net”
This week, another exercise from Scott McCloud’s Making Comics. In this exercise, McCloud asks us to create a cast of characters that share one trait (from a list of traits–see below) but are different in at least four other ways. These academics are my four characters (in the order I wrote them). Sandra: 45, aContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: “Casting a Wide Net””
A Writer’s Notebook: Comics cut-and-paste
Today: Some comics. Slightly later today: An explanation of the exercise. In some ways, this exercise is similar to last week’s, in that I’m “borrowing” from other sources and piecing them together into new art. Of course, this looks wildly different: It’s more than partly visual. I’ve just finished reading the third of Scott McCloud‘sContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Comics cut-and-paste”
A Writer’s Notebook: Magnet poetry
Caveat emptor: This is not good poetry. Blame the magnets. My velvet yesterday surrounds today in translucent smoke, you in corduroy angling for another cut of tea, steam a prisoner behind your glasses, the naked smile that tugs one side of your lips, the memory of the porcelain morning light over the ocean. We neverContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Magnet poetry”
A Writer’s Notebook: Scene or short-short?
Sometimes you just write. This is what I wrote. There is no particular exercise, but I’ll explain below where this comes from. He didn’t mow the hay field, or rake it into rows or bale it into the wide wheels, bound in plastic, that baked in the sun now. But he owned the aftermath, theContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Scene or short-short?”
A Writer’s Notebook: The great outdoors
This is a fairly old-school, simple exercise, but it’s one I keep returning to again and again. But as usual, more on that below. I’ve never seen the skies in other vast states, like, say, Wyoming or Montana, but I’ve seen skies in California, skies in New York, skies in Wisconsin and Florida. And itContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: The great outdoors”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 