“May the words in your mind crystallize into magic on the page.” – Brian Rathbone.
A writer’s blessing
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writing
What we can learn from ‘untranslatable’ illnesses – BBC Future
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200604-what-we-can-learn-from-untranslatable-illnesses
Things to keep in mind when worldbuilding.
As a longtime lover of books and bookshops…
I approve this message!
How Books and Bookshops Improve Our Mental Health – And Why We Must Protect Them | naked capitalism
If you wonder why I tagged it with “markets”, our local bookstores are markets for our books, too. Especially if you’re self-publishing!
Advice to storytellers from me
Tell the story that needs to be told, in the way it needs to be told, to the length it needs to be told.
Don’t poison a story by insisting it must be an apple when it’s really an orange.
Don’t stunt a story by forcing it beyond its natural growth nor by forcing it to grow in a box too small.
“Genres” and “standard story lenghs” are publisher’s artefacts, not part of storytelling.
Breakthroughs don’t come through abiding by conventions and working in boxes.
Always write something different
Publishers hated A Wrinkle In Time. And Madeleine L’Engle never forgot the rejections.
What publishers like best is what’s already been done.
Nobody broke through by writing the same things everyone else has written. Don’t let publishers’ small minds limit you!
So your hero and heroine just locked gazes for the first time
You’ve just taken on a lot to write that scene:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190108-why-meeting-anothers-gaze-is-so-powerful
A quote slightly-tweaked for writers
“To gain mastery over reality is to create a mythology worth living for. Your head is the space from which all meaning derives. It is the shaman’s – and writer’s/artist’s/musician’s [my addition] – role to shine light on that meaning in order, like a wind-up doll, to make you go.” – Thomas T. Hills
Why Writing Poetry Makes for Good Storytelling
Why you should hire me as your sidekick
Inspired by a writing exercise (write a letter to the hero applying to be their sidekick) at the end of a Hawaii Fiction Writers work shop on buddies and sidekicks:
“When you’re captured by the bad guys, tied up and being tortured to reveal where our client is hidden, I would shoot you in the head – then myself – to protect our client’s life.”
BBC – Future – What it takes to stand up to authority
The Republican Party needs to do this to Trump:
Us writers need this, too. How many stories have one or more characters that have to stand up to an authority of some sort (legitimate or illegitimate)?
