It’s almost here.
National Novel Writing Month.
Oy. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘creative writing’
November Cometh
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, nanowrimo, novel writing, writing life on 26 Oct 2019| 4 Comments »
Making the Shift
Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged creative writing, Creativity, short fiction, Writing, writing novels on 29 Aug 2019| 1 Comment »
The Princess Gang rolled into the cul-de-sac on the same day Mr. B’s plum tree decided to bloom.
That’s the first line from a story that started flowing yesterday. Remembering, of course, that (say it with me) all first drafts are crap, it’ll obviously go through some revisions, but the important thing is that it was followed by a thousand words of a quiet little story that’s been pinballing around my brain for over a year.
The reason I share this is because nothing like this has happened for a long, long time.
Yes, I’ve written some fiction in the past handful of years. Most of it has been in posts on this very blog—vignettes, word imagery, poems—all meant for immediate consumption. I’ve also been slugging my way through a championship bout with a new novel which, though reportedly of good quality (especially for a first draft), has been the most difficult fiction project of my life. But a short story, a for-real short story? It’s been years. The last one I wrote was “The Book of Solomon.” It’s good, and it found a home in The Timberline Review, but I wrote that story years ago, and there has been zip-a-dee-doo-dah since.
Then yesterday: Boom. My pen began to work. My brain began to conjure. It was like my voice suddenly returned after a decade of muted trauma.
Why? (more…)
It Can’t All Be Gold
Posted in Writing, tagged caravan, creative writing, immigration, modern poetry, Poetry, short story, vignettes on 13 Aug 2019| 4 Comments »
August, without a doubt, is my least favorite month. It’s when the garden starts to pant and parch, spiders build massive obstacle courses in the yard, fruit goes from unripe green to fuzzy grey within minutes, and wildfire smoke descends to choke our skies, our lungs, our eyes.
And this August, it’s also when a “great” idea for a bit of topical poetry falls totally flat. (more…)
Write What I Know?
Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged building believable characters, Characters, creative writing, novel writing, setting, write what you know on 11 Jul 2019| 2 Comments »
If I were to have followed the standard advice of “write what you know” (meaning only write from personal experience), then none of my books would ever have come into being. I would never have written about anything historical (how could I, if I was born in 19-hrmahrm?), or about anything set in Brittany, or certainly I could never ever have written anything to do with dinosaurs (who could?).
The only book I’ve written that had a shred of “what I know”ishness to it is Dreams of the Desert Wind. The setting was a place I lived in for a time (Jerusalem) and I drew on a lot of personal experience for descriptions of the street scenes (like the one mentioned here, with “Samovar Man“).
No, when I started writing, if I’d written only what I knew, then I’d have written a book about working in IT (now there’s a page-turner), or something set in the world of classical music. (more…)
Pass it On
Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged creative writing, teaching, Writing on 23 May 2019| Leave a Comment »
A number of years ago, my neighbor expressed an interest in my books. Being the new-author-hungry-for-any-attention sort of guy, I gave her a copy of the first three books in my Fallen Cloud Saga. (No, I wasn’t being stingy; it’s all that had been published at the time.)
My neighbor never mentioned the books again—not a good sign—so, as per my usual practice, I never brought up the subject again.
Fast-forward a dozen years. (more…)
At the Edge
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, modern poetry, Poetry, short fiction, vignettes on 26 Mar 2019| 1 Comment »
at the cliff’s edge
the earth falls
through giddy space
to clammy sands
sunlight spears the steel wool clouds
and blazes from gunmetal curls
brined winds press me back
with death-cold hands
hot anger fills me
magma of rage
ready to spew forth
and boil the sea below
as I ponder the choice between
a hateful god
slayer of the young
and no god at all
we are
upright beasts gifted
with massive power
over nothing
with dreams of eternity
circumscribed by birth and death
we are
ephemeral
mayfly deities
standing at the verge
in sight of the distant shore
ready to leap
to fly
to perish
on a solitary sojourn
that has no arrival
Be More Specific
Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged creative writing, novel writing, percolation, problem solving on 14 Mar 2019| Leave a Comment »
On occasion, I ask my brain to go through its memory banks and search for something I know I know, but which I cannot at the moment remember. This search method is a technique honed by decades of living in a pre-Internet world, before Google, Wikipedia, IMDb, and all the rest.
What is her phone number? Didn’t I read a book about this subject? Who wrote that song? Where have I seen that actor before?
I got so good at this that I could do it in my sleep. Literally.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 