Tag: creativity

Now Is The Winter of Our Discontent…or is it?

Andrée Levie-Warrilow Leave a comment

Winter is not my favourite season… and it’s not because of the outrageous heating bills, the terror of driving in whiteouts, the dodging black ice in the grocery store parking lot,  the shortened hours of daylight, the cancelled music concerts,  or the wind that blew most of the songbirds south.

It’s because I need colour.

I am a devout gardener; my front and back yards are riots of colours for three seasons. Spring and summer and fall each have their own colour-filled delights and they never last long enough. And I’m a visual artist. I sell paintings filled with a range of  colours that convey every mood and emotion you can put on canvas. Every room in my house is painted a different colour.

And yet where do I live? In a Snow Belt.  Read more

Were Your Hands Made for Writing?

Donna Judy Curtin Leave a comment

There have been times, many times actually, where I’ve doubted my ability to make it in the writing industry–to put something to paper that will resonate with others and cause them think and feel something new.

The truth is, although I’ve been writing since I was a young girl; journalling, crafting stories from any experience and writing letters, essays, scientific articles and recording medical records–I hold no degree in creative writing.

Any yet, there are so many things I have mastered in my life, that I learned with my own two hands–not from school. Read more

The Long Journey Home

Diane Ferguson Leave a comment

It’s the journey, not the destination—I keep reminding myself. And it’s a long journey, or at least I’m making it one. It was about a year ago that I decided to re-write the novel that I’d already written seven times. I was going back to scratch. I’d hoped it would take me three months, but now I’m hoping I’ll be done before the end of this year.

In that year, I got wrapped up in a bit too much volunteer work, over-extending myself. Of course, the writing got squeezed, but I still wrote something almost every day, just not always my novel. That’s been sporadic, at best. (I’ve been using Pacemaker so I now have a visual graph of my bad writing habits.) Read more

Everyone else is a Better Writer than Me – And other Fictions I Tell Myself

Diane Ferguson Leave a comment

I imagine that all those published authors and prolific writers sit down at their computers and just let it flow out of them. Sure, they may have to edit a bit, but they never have to struggle for the words, they’re in the zone. Then because I do struggle, I take this as a sure sign I musn’t be a real writer. It’s just another example that I’m faking it, I’m a “wanna-be”.

Because in my head, everyone else’s life is perfect, especially if you’ve already published a book! Then something comes along to burst that bubble and make me realize, no, this is tough for all writers. Each of us has a process but the most important part of that process is: bum in seat, hands on keyboard, social media shut-off. Read more

Food in Fiction: What are your characters having for dinner tonight?

Seana Moorhead Leave a comment

In Ian Hamilton’s crime series, Ava Lee is always eating interesting and descriptive food. In the book, The Wild Beasts of Wuhan, Ava Lee orders “sautéed languoustines with crab tortellini in a shellfish bisque as a starter, and pan-fried black bream with truffle mashed potatoes as her main.”

Later in the same book, Ava orders without hesitation: foie gras and black sea bass with oyster mushrooms.

What are languoustines?

I had to look it up: it’s also called “Norway Lobster”, a luxury seafood prized for its sweet meat. They’re crazy expensive because of their rarity. Bream is a fish. Ava Lee adores expensive luxury food. It tells the reader about her income and social status. It also makes me hungry.

Being specific about the food your characters are eating can bring richness and depth to your writing. It can help establish the setting, the historical period, and the culture of your characters. But it can do more.

Here is my nine course meal of how food can add flavour and spice to your novel:

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GOYA

Seana Moorhead Leave a comment

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I recently bought a pottery cup with the word “goya” written on it by a local artist.  “Goya” is an Urdu word and has been described as an “untranslatable” word. Roughly, it can mean the “transporting suspension of disbelief that can occur in good story telling.”

 

This tiny word captures what I seek in my writing: to have a reader become enchanted by my story and feel transported into another world.   This is the ultimate in literary escapism and all without drugs.

 

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Getting Past Your Own Preconceptions

Andrée Levie-Warrilow 2 Comments
Two Roads
Divergent Creativity

So I’m working with some of my writing colleagues on an anthology of short stories.

We agreed on a common theme to give the stories context and cohesion, and the ideas were brilliant and coming fast and furious. As anyone who belongs to one knows, the best thing about being in a writers’ group is it inspires you to hunker down to your own work. As soon as they come up with ideas out loud, you find yourself spurred to create and contribute your own. So many ideas – it whets the appetite of the imagination.

I made an outline; I made notes. Copious notes. Dialogues. I could see the characters in my head, I could imagine where they lived, the routes they moved along on. The words came, the pages filled up. Read more

Walking on the Edge of Chaos

Seana Moorhead Leave a comment

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Charles Dickens walked at night, roaming the streets of London to work on plot lines.

Mark Twain paced.

J.K. Rowling stated: “Nothing like a nighttime stroll to give you ideas.”

Hemmingway also walked to think through his stories.

Is there a connection between walking and sparking creativity?

When you walk, you allow your conscious mind to access new ideas in the subconscious. For most of us, walking doesn’t take a lot of thought but does get our body moving and allows our mind to meander at the same time as our feet are wandering.

I recently listened to a radio program interviewing Eric Weiner about his new book, “The Geography of Genius”.   Disclaimer: I haven’t read the book, but I was curious enough about his idea to read online reviews, on which I based the following. I gather that his thesis is something about geography – in his theory, urban centres – being important to producing works of genius. He claims that genius thrives in chaos: in terms of geography, that means, cities. Urban centres abound with chaos as anyone from Grey and Bruce Counties knows when we try to navigate Toronto traffic. He points to historical genius figures who lived in cities, such as Mozart’s Vienna, and the Greek philosophers in Athens.

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