This is not done. It’s probably not even good. But it’s been an interesting exercise. But I’ll explain more later. I can tell you only a little about the man and woman before they entered my shop. They both were new, you see, and so much of what I know about them I know onlyContinue reading “Writer’s Notebook: Coffee story (with apologies to Orhan Pamuk)”
Tag Archives: writing exercises
Writer’s Notebook: Holiday story
I’m sort of semi-cheating this week. I am working on an exercise, but the story I’m working on will eventually show up online as a story, so I’d rather keep it under wraps while I work on it. Still, I want to offer something along the same lines here, so behold, a quick excerpt fromContinue reading “Writer’s Notebook: Holiday story”
Writer’s Notebook: a few thoughts on writing
This week, I have one of my classes writing about a personal belief. It’s going to lead them to a personal essay, so what I’m about to do is a pretty poor example of what they’re up to, but when I began thinking of topics I might tackle in order to write along with them,Continue reading “Writer’s Notebook: a few thoughts on writing”
A Writer’s Notebook: family history
This one rambles, but it’s an exercise and it’s rough, so bear with me. I used to read books. I mean on paper, pages made of wood pulp pressed flat in huge machines, cut and stitched or glued together and then cut again, printed with ink and bound in cardstock covers. When I turned theContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: family history”
A Writer’s Notebook: tarot story
Last week, riffing off a clip of The Daily Show, I wrote short bit about how cool it would be to do live “writings,” like a reading in a bookstore or a library but instead of reading existing work, we’d write something new, live, on the fly, according to ideas tossed at us from an audience. And then,Continue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: tarot story”
A Writer’s Notebook: “This is happening”
This week, I’m going to give you the writing exercise up front, because it was a prompt and, in the “real” world, the audience would know what I was writing toward before-hand: The other day, I posted a clip from The Daily Show in which John Hodgman jokingly suggests authors stage live “writings” in bookstores,Continue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: “This is happening””
A Writer’s Notebook: one-sentence stories
The other day, some friends of mine and I were celebrating a new story by a writer friend of ours, Riley Schultz. Which is nothing new — I am lucky to know enough writers that I get to celebrate new fiction quite frequently. But what makes Riley’s story particularly noteworthy is that it is onlyContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: one-sentence stories”
A Writer’s Notebook: query plot synopsis
So, first some notes: I’ve skipped a couple of weeks of the Writer’s Notebook, not because I haven’t been working but because I’ve been working on writing not really suited to the Notebook. I’m in a place right now where I have a lot of finished work I want to get into print, and itContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: query plot synopsis”
Not really a new publication
Remember back almost a year ago when I wrote a little story based on Chris Van Allsburg’s “Uninvited Guests” from his book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick? It was for a Writer’s Notebook exercise,* and it turned out to be a lot of fun. Anyway, I’ve always enjoyed that story and I like revisiting it nowContinue reading “Not really a new publication”
A Writer’s Notebook: The Writer’s Toolbox, sentence sticks
So, last week I let Jamie Cat Callan‘s The Writer’s Toolbox help me start a story. It was about John, an architect from Minnesota who is feeling guilty over abandoning his elderly mother in order to stalk the woman he’s secretly in love with. Don’t ask me — the Toolbox came up with this story. But that’s whereContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: The Writer’s Toolbox, sentence sticks”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 