Research? Who needs to do research? That’s been my attitude for most of my writing life. One of the first things I learned when reading about writing was to ‘write what you know’. Since I knew the things I knew because I was interested in them, writing about them seemed …
Monday: It was a short day for everything due to an out-of-town appointment this afternoon. I managed an hour of idea generation working on summaries and jotting down titles and another half hour of writing long hand away from home, but that’s it. I didn’t even get to the research! …
Do you want to hear something funny and just a little bit weird? A couple months ago, I was stuck with the story I was working on. I couldn’t think of a single thing to do with it. It was as if all the characters had died and the story …
When my husband was a member of the Senseney Music Wichita Community Band, I attended weekly rehearsals almost every week. I also attended every performance unless otherwise detained. For the most part, each performance season was comprised of weeks of rehearsals and concluded with three or four concerts. Once the …
Monday: I devoted most of the day to idea generation in one form or another. The best success was with writing new summaries or expanding old ones, but that’s no surprise. I decided to try something different and write as moved by music. I sat in my chair for half …
Monday: I try to begin my work week with an hour of idea generation. The actual goal is to do an hour each week, but I’ve found it’s best to get this thing checked off the ‘to-do’ list as quickly as possible. The accomplishment of such a seemingly simple thing …
Last week, I identified the five most important parts of the story (you can read that article here). The beginning, the end, and each of the three major turning points. These five items are the basic framework that supports the rest of the story. As you recall, we ended last …
Monday: The day and week began with an hour of idea generation, as usual. In at least one case, I picked up where I left off Saturday evening, expanding some of the thoughts on story world that I began exploring through the summary process. Something seems to be taking shape. …
Last week, I described the process I use most often to evaluate story ideas. That is, to determine which ones are worth pursuing and which ones are better left alone. (Read that post here.) This week, I want to walk through the first stages of that process. For me, designing …
The past week was about as opposite the previous week as it’s possible to get. For the week of February 20, I had a set idea in mind of what I wanted to do each day and how much time I’d spend each day. While I fell short on putting …