Tag Archives: writing

A Writer’s Notebook: Word association

This exercise requires a quick explanation up front, but I’ll explain where it comes from and what I’m doing with it below. The prompt itself is this: Brainstorm or free write around one or all of the following words: glass, willow, tile, edge, ring. Few of the houses have glass, because the scale is smallContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Word association”

A Writer’s Notebook: Found dialogue

The following conversation is not one I invented. I made up the characters and the situation, but the dialogue already existed. But I’ll explain below. Jacob smiled and leaned across the table. “It’s terribly funny,” he said. He winked. Sebastian shook his head. “You are pulling my leg.” Jacob only grinned. “You exaggerate!” Sebastian said. “SurelyContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Found dialogue”

A Writer’s Notebook: A blank page

I spent part of this week in the hospital for a bleeding ulcer.  Nothing life-threatening, but it did threaten to interfere with our travel plans.  The good news is that it didn’t, and today, I am traveling.  But those two things combined–the ulcer and the travel–have left me with a blank page for this week’sContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: A blank page”

A Writer’s Notebook: Character details

This story I’m writing about the character named Ford is ballooning, but in the best way–each week I find new ways to build it, expand it, let it breathe. But more on that below.  Right now, five quick questions to help flesh out the character of Ford: a) What are the character’s physical attributes, fromContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Character details”

99 literary agents on the wall….

99 literary agents!…. Come on, sing it with me now! Over the past several months, I’ve become a big fan of the blog Literary Rejections on Display, partly because the rejections all look so familiar (it’s nice to know we’re not alone in the long, good fight to share great literature, isn’t it?) but alsoContinue reading “99 literary agents on the wall….”

A Writer’s Notebook: Descriptive outlines

Recently, I had the idea to write a new short story in a particular style, a genre I have practiced before but a long time ago. I’m out of practice. So I dug up some old examples and some new ones, and I started analyzing them for clues as to how to proceed. And thenContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Descriptive outlines”

Still MORE writing and music

With all the posts I’ve been writing lately about the influence of music on writing, I simply have to share this recent discovery:  It’s a song-sharing site called Stereomood, but the idea is not simply to share songs.  (The site is a streaming site, not a download site, so I’m sharing this because it actsContinue reading “Still MORE writing and music”

A Writer’s Notebook: Likes and Dislikes

Still working on the character of Ford. This week, his likes and dislikes, which I’ll explain below. Ford likes the sound of cicadas in the summertime, the whirring from afternoon till dusk. He likes the heat, and the cicadas’ song always brings it. Ford likes old pick-ups, the big boxy kind from the `50s, theContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Likes and Dislikes”

Music & Literature Part I: Experimentation

a guest blog by Ryan Werner A while back, I wrote a post about how music influences my writing, which led to not one but two Writer’s Notebook exercises about writing from music. But I said in that initial post that my relationship with music is purely as a listener–I don’t have any experience withContinue reading “Music & Literature Part I: Experimentation”