Tag: short story

The Joy of Creative Solitude

Lori Twining 1 Comment
Lori Twining ~ Sensational Sunset, Halls Island

Being surrounded by noise all day makes it challenging to be creative. By noise, I mean people talking, children crying, dogs barking, brakes screeching, horns honking, music blaring, cell phones ringing, notifications pinging… it never stops. Your heart beats faster and faster until your blood pressure is through the roof and your anxiety level is sitting at the maximum setting. 

As a writer, how can you find a quiet moment to squeeze out a line or two of a bestselling novel if you can’t even hear yourself think? Most of us can’t find large blocks of uninterrupted time to create, so finding creative solitude is essential. Everyone needs a little space and time to be in the moment, to find their happy place, where they can take a break from the chaos, close their eyes, be clear-headed, and wallow in the silence.

I finally found that perfect place of creative solitude, where you can be mindful and make intentional decisions to find the answers you didn’t even know you were asking the questions for. Let me tell you a little bit about it. 

Read more

Emotion is the Superhero of Fiction Writing

Tracey Richardson Leave a comment

“It’s just emotion that’s taken me over…” The BeeGees, from the song “Emotion”

Emotion is, well, just about everything when it comes to fiction. Emotion is what engages readers the deepest. Emotion is what makes thereader laugh, cry, cheer, get pissed off, hate, judge. It makes them feel. It makes them forget they’ve fallen into the world of fiction.

Emotion is the one, main element of my writing that’s taken me to a new level the last few years. And it took me awhile to get there. To get how important it is in fiction and to get (or at least somewhat get) how to transfer, infuse, express emotion in my writing. Read more

Under the Influence

Lori Twining Leave a comment

Under the Influence of Nick Petrie ~ Photo by Lori Twining

As writers, our job is to create stories. Unique stories. It doesn’t matter whether they take shape inside poems, short stories or novels, because either way, we are still developing distinctive characters and a plotline. We are telling a story from beginning to end. The question is, how do you come up with the uniqueness of the story, when there are already billions of stories in existence. How will your story stand out from the rest? It may not be that unique after all. Or is it? Read more

Lessons Learned

Bernice Connell Leave a comment

Bernice - EditorAs a newbie to writing, and related editing and publishing processes, I recently experienced an eye-opening, roller coaster ride of a learning curve as the Ascribe writers prepared a collection of short stories with plans to publish.

It was an ambitious project. Several group members served as editors, for each other and for the rest of us, in order to ensure our work was the best it could be. Each story was reviewed by four editors. In our scramble to meet deadlines, we created quite the log-jam at the end, making for extremely short turn-around times for writing changes and submitting stories to the next editor. Read more

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