This section contains some resources for writers, but the emphasis is on what I’m currently calling “widgets”: not exactly exercises, they’re designed to pair theoretical conceptions of narrative with challenges that force you to apply those theories constructively.
Since coming back to the saxophone, I’ve discovered what an amazing resource the internet is for a musician who is looking into techniques, looking for ways to improve his or her playing. Within ten minutes of looking around, one finds all kinds of homegrown etudes, studies, all kinds of things one can download, print out, […]
At Clarion West, our instructor–one of my favorite authors, the brilliant Maureen F. McHugh–suggested an idea to our class that seemed, when I heard it, to be self-evidently logical and obvious… except of course I’d never heard it stated explicitly before, or thought of it myself, and when she suggested it, my mind was also blown […]
In my last post in this series, I mentioned (and linked) the blog of my friend Ian McHugh, an excellent Australian SF/fantasy writer. I wanted to mention this post of his, regarding the usefulness (or uselessness) of word frequency analysis when trying to figure out what you’re doing unconsiously in your writing, as well as […]
A while back, I started a series of posts on what I was then calling “Études for Writers.” I think that title is a mistake. I had reasons for choosing the title, of course, which I explained in the first post on the subject: basically, études are special kinds of exercises that marry technique to sensitivity to a theoretical structure. Just […]
The other day, I posted on the idea of “widgets” for writers. Here’s an example: a double-widget focused on character development. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been taking a break and reading up on some of the subjects I need to know more about for the remainder of the book I’m working on. Namely, about The South […]