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Category: novels
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Great openings from Best American Short Stories 2013 !
I’m making my way through my copy of The Best American Short Stories 2013, and I wanted to share with you some of the best opening lines. Remember, an opening line can get YOU going on your own writing. The trick is NOT to read the complete story until AFTER you’ve written your own story.…
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Quotation Inspiration #005: The way I feel about strong writing and…
This quotation is definitely the way I feel about strong writing and dedicated readers: Try this: Take a moment to reflect: What’s beautiful about the writing you admire?
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SIWC Countdown: 9 upcoming contests…9 days until SIWC!
The countdown to SIWC 2013 continues. 9 days until SIWC, and their contest is over for this year, so I thought I’d put up info about 9 other interesting contests you might consider for the near future: Lynn Manuel Children’s Fiction Contest : http://www.grasmerepublishing.com/ Creative Nonfiction Contest by carte blanche: http://carte-blanche.org/carte-blanchecnfc-society-creative-nonfiction-contest/ Bliss Carman Poetry Award: http://www.prairiefire.ca/contests/bliss-carman-poetry-award/…
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Writing scale from The Pocket Muse
Just like musicians believe in practicing scales as a way of preparing, staying in tune with the music, and connecting to something familiar, I’m a firm believer that writers can get going and create new work, even when they feel blocked, by using a writing scale, or prompt. I call them starters, and…
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An important character to add for your protagonist
Ok, in my last post, I promised the next one would deal with a character you want to add in for your protagonist. There are actually TWO that I’ll talk about. Think positives and negatives. For a muscle to get stronger, it has to push against something, a heavy weight. This weight is…
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Katabasis and your narrative fiction
In Linda Lappin’s article, “Your Journey to Hell and Back,” in the September 2013 edition of The Writer, she returns to Joseph Campbell’s classic text, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, to discuss KATABASIS: According to Campbell, in myths fairy tales and fictional narratives of mythic resonance, the hero’s or heroine’s descent to the…
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Title Generator #002: More titles for your poetry and prose !
Yesterday, I mentioned a mashup method for creating unique titles. Here’s a second, and I’ll use the same book as my resource as an example (Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia). You, of course, can use any anthology that might be sitting on your bookshelf. Purely on a whim, and since…
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Title generator #001: Great titles for your poetry or prose!
One way to jolt your creativity is to come up with a list of new titles for pieces you HAVEN’T written yet. One way to do that is to make a mashup of OTHER titles. For instance, I recently bought a copy of Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia. Here’s a bit…
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Starter for you and your writing: Take it from here!
Ok, I’ve had a marvelous time in Phuket, Thailand, and soon I’ll be off to Malacca, Malaysia. In the meantime, it’s time to get back to the writing. Here’s a starter to get us going this week… First, read this beginning from “River of Toys,” by Edward Allen: I love to walk with my…
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Nonfiction openings #005: Life bites back!
First, read the following opening: KILLING MY BODY TO SAVE MY MIND, by Lauren Slater, from Elle My blood is in a blender. It’s just about the only bit of brightness in this drab office of a life insurance company that, before betting on my body, wants to sample its various fluids. First, it…