inspiration
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Don’t wait for your Muse to get to work. Don’t ignore her either.
I had a solid plan for the summer. Finish a new novel. Work on some short stories. Then get to work on polishing the hell out of an older novel that has been waiting for me. It was a good plan. A very productive plan. And it’s pretty much been blown to crap. But in Read more
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Art to support your art
Writers can be a fickle bunch. We immerse ourselves in our story, falling in love with our characters, daydreaming about our settings. Then we see something shiny in the distance, a new story idea, a really good book, even (gasp) something happening in our own real life and our make believe world can fall away, Read more
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Write your first draft for you and your last draft for your reader
I think I’ve been having an existential crisis. Does that qualify as a good excuse for not posting recently? I’ve been writing much more than average. I polished a final draft. I’m working on a bunch of short stories and really refining my process there. I’ve been catching up on reading. I’ve been brainstorming, outlining, Read more
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The Alchemist: Required reading for Writers
“Before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people Read more
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I am not a writer
I recently read This Great Article on John Steinbeck, and this quote stuck out to me. “I’m not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people.” He scribbled it in his journal while he wrote The Grapes of Wrath. Pretty much one of the best books ever written. We haven’t touched on imposture syndrome Read more
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If you love a character, break their nose
I recently read a great short story with a great premise and a great character and when I was done, I just wasn’t satisfied at all. Because, while the conflict was there, and it was pretty rough, things kinda just worked out for the character. She never had to take a hard stance. She never Read more
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Just a little Tuesday Tip: Creating is the best
We all spin our tires. We all get bogged down with fear or rejection or the “reality” of what it means to pursue a creative career. It can be nasty. It can be incredibly discouraging when you look at the big picture, when you have 385 pages to edit. When you are just punching out Read more
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Let the success of others be an inspiration, not a discouragement
There’s a woman I know. She’s living the dream. She just landed the job of a lifetime and she is thriving. It blends perfectly with her life as a mom, allowing her to move up in her household income and she is pretty much walking on air. I can see her posts and seethe. Why Read more
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Writing again!
Last spring I was unstoppable. I wrote “Summer’s Circle” in a month and was well underway with a second novel when bad news came along and.. stopped me. Since then I’ve been puttering around. Editing a little. Writing a few lines here and there. I managed to string together my first short story in years. Read more
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The sequence of events
Today I woke up to a trail of trash running from my kitchen, through the dining room, across the living room, down the steps, through the family room and piled in a disgusting crescent around the unlocked crate of my dog, Verdi, who was peacefully sleeping off her night of binge eating. I latched her Read more
LC W. Allingham 