Category: on writing

Essential Ingredients for a Writing Retreat

Donna Judy Curtin 1 Comment
The Modern Schoolhouse in Pinkerton.

Planning to set aside the time and space to write new words can be one of the best ways to amplify your creative process. Whether your space is an early morning coffee shop, an Irish pub, or a planned writing retreat–scheduling the time to write is essential. For myself, working full-time, raising kids, attending figure skating & hockey with family, and carving out time to cook healthy meals… tends to demand most of my daylight hours. Therefore, dedicating the time to write must be deliberate.

Over recent years, I’ve been blessed to join a couple of writers who similarly battle with this time crunch challenge. We’ve found that planned writing retreats with chunks of undisturbed time, are paramount to moving our writing projects forward. The following is a list of key ingredients to a successful writing retreat.

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Transitions

Diane Ferguson 1 Comment

“Transition: (a) a passage or change from one place, state, condition etc. to another; (b) passage in thought, speech, or writing, from one subject to another. ” (From the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.)

If we’re lucky and kind to ourselves, we will live long lives. And in that life time we will be different people, wear different hats, be different ages. Some will change more than others, but we will all change to some degree. When we take that same concept to our writing, we’re talking about the character arc. How does the character change over the course of the novel?

(There are stories where the protagonist doesn’t change, but I don’t particularly like those stories.)

All stories have characters, but I love stories where the main focus is the character development and plot is secondary. I’m interested in people: how they live, how they feel, how they function, how they survive. They say that fiction is the art that comes closest to representing human consciousness. I want to know what goes on inside people’s heads.

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In the Event of My Death: Burn Everything… or Steamroll It!

Lori Twining 2 Comments

Over the Christmas holidays, I decided to declutter my basement office. The task had been on my To-Do List for far too long. I procrastinated because it was a BIG job, which ultimately took me seven days to complete. Sad, but true.

While sifting through the stacks of papers, books, and file folders, I found some personal notes full of secret information. Information that I don’t need or want anyone else to know about. What if someone else had seen them? What would they think? What would they say?

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Inspirations by and for Writers

Bernice Connell 1 Comment

“One day I will find the right words and they will be simple.” So said Jack Kerouac. An encouraging adage that resonates for me.

I have been following several blogs that focus on inspirational philosophers and authors and am learning more about many familiar names in the literary world.

Most interesting to me currently is Tennessee Williams. Follies of the Gods is a collaboration between Williams and interviewer James Grissom who collated Williams’ thoughts on the actors he worked with that brought his works to the big screen. Descriptions of his relationships with the actors are beautifully written.

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5 STEPS TO IMPROVE YOUR WRITING – FOCUSING ON REPETITION

Donna Judy Curtin 1 Comment
Photo by Daria Shatova on Unsplash

The art of writing isn’t just about art. It’s also about skill. Sure, perhaps you have been inspired to share your stories and get a novel published, but there is a big difference between jotting down a few journal entries and being sufficiently accomplished and persistent enough to get published.  

Published authors have worked incredibly hard to hone their craft. Acquiring the competences needed to draft a novel that readers can’t put down, sparking imaginations and poking dusty hearts, is much more than an overnight trick. Read more

A New Year: time for new writing goals and charting a path to success

Seana Moorhead 1 Comment
Image by David Mark from Pixabay

It’s a new year and a perfect time to think about writing goals for 2023. There are four approaches to setting new years’ goals:

1.  Set multiple goals but break them within minutes, hours or days because we never had any true intention. This is more a “wish” list of wants / desires rather than a true goal setting.

2 . Set one or two goals and managed to keep it until around Ground Hog’s day and then give up because honestly, keeping to your goals is hard work.  

3.  Refuse to set goals at New Years because either we know there’s no point (because we won’t keep to them), feel it is too cliche or we are completely content with our present life so we need no goals.

4.  Set actual achievable goals and keep to it, even if the the goal is not ultimately achieved, the steps and habits get developed over the year.   

How do we get to number 4?

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Ghosts of Christmas’ Past

Diane Ferguson Leave a comment

Will I ever forget the blizzard of 22? We were stuck home like so many others. But since we knew it was coming, we’d prepared. We’d canceled plans to visit family on Christmas and made sure we were well-stocked with food and necessities. But no more than an hour into the blizzard and we’d lost power. This wasn’t looking good. We hadn’t filled the water buckets yet. Our usual debate about getting a generator ensued.

Without power, we stayed by the fire most of the day. What better time to do some reading! I have the most comfortable reading chair right next to the fire. That, a cat and my blanket and I was all set for a Hygge Christmas. I took the forced digital disconnection to catch-up on some reading on writing. I re-read most of Robert McKee’s, Story.  And I skimmed through, Story Genius, by Lisa Cron, which I’d previously read. And also caught up a bit on, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, by Jessica Brody.

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