It's Daylight Savings this weekend, bad news as my brain already feels like it's made of teflon, things sliding off as soon as I try to remember them. Now we add a time shift to really screw things up. The blinds to my living room and bed room remain closed as I write this post … Continue reading #weekendcoffeeshare: Drinking in Semi-Darkness to Gear Up for Things Ahead
Tag: Writing
Sage Advice During NaNoWriMo: Ursula K. Le Guin and Her National Book Awards Speech
I read pieces of this speech in Twitter feeds. From my laptop as I write word after word, this makes me go back and write more words. Hear it and be inspired: http://youtu.be/Et9Nf-rsALk
Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Judy Blume
Where do you get your ideas? I used to be afraid to answer that question. I thought if I ever figured it out I'd never have another one! But now I know that ideas come from everywhere—memories of my own life, incidents in my children's lives, what I see and hear and read—and most of … Continue reading Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Judy Blume
Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Chuck Wendig
I’m saying, sludge yourself into the ass receptacle and peck keyboard keys like a hungry chicken until it makes words. Tap tap tap. Click click click. Or pick up one of the tools used by our distant ancestors — it is a tube filled with the liquid black souls of all the animals we’ve made … Continue reading Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Chuck Wendig
Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Jack Kerouac
Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy Submissive to everything, open, listening Try never get drunk outside yr own house Be in love with yr life Something that you feel will find its own form Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind Blow as deep as you want to blow Write what … Continue reading Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Jack Kerouac
Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: George R.R. Martin
“The best writing advice I had was [in] ‘Heinlein’s Rules for Writers’ by (American science fiction author) Robert A. Heinlein. His first rule is that you must write, and I was already doing that, but his second rule is, ‘You must finish what you write,’ and that had a big impact on me.” – George … Continue reading Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: George R.R. Martin
Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Rainbow Rowell
That’s why I eventually decided to try NaNoWriMo—to fast-forward through that desperate, blank-page phase and get to the good stuff. I told myself that it didn’t matter if my first draft was bad. All my books have required major revisions, anyway. And even if NaNoWriMo was a complete waste of time—if I ended up with … Continue reading Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Rainbow Rowell
Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Stephen King
In a class situation, this is very, very hard. That fearlessness always comes when a kid is writing for himself, and almost never when doing directed writing for the grade (unless you get one of those rare fearless kids who’s totally confident). The best thing—maybe the only thing—is to tell the student that telling the … Continue reading Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Stephen King
Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Margaret Atwood
Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils. If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type. Take … Continue reading Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Margaret Atwood
Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Diana Gabaldon
Frankly, there are only three “rules” to being a successful writer: 1. Read. Read everything. This is how you learn both what you like, and what you don’t like (and you sure shouldn’t waste time writing stuff you don’t like, no matter how popular you think it might be)–and how you begin to learn what … Continue reading Sage Advice Before NaNoWriMo: Diana Gabaldon
Unpaused Life 