...the first step in creativity is not focusing on goals but letting go of them. Being open and aimless. Forgetting preconceived notions. Jill Jepson Are any of my ideas original thought? Or have I been deluding myself? Some time ago, I was receiving Jill Jepson’s newsletter in my email inbox twice a month. I unsubscribed …
Mental Illness in Fiction
As I inchmeal along in my WiP, I feel a compelling allurement to the general theme of my story, namely how mental illness affects a person’s life. It may seem simple at first. Reality gets distorted. That answers the what, but how about the how, why, and when? We may know people who battle these …
Redesigning My Work Plan
First, just to get it out of the way, my WiP is now over 25,000 words. It hasn’t grown much since August, less than 12,000 words worth. I’m still a pantser for the most part. I do character questionnaires as the characters pop into the story. I use the Bing map to lay out where …
Sending Out the Wrong Vibes
I guess I’m not paying adequate attention to the impression I throw out to people. I’m not sure when the inappropriate signals started spurting out from me though. It might have begun over twenty-five years ago. Or it could have been as little as eight years ago. One thing is for sure though. I’ve gotten …
Maybe Self-Doubt isn’t Bad
As of late, I’ve been coming across hoards of articles about how we should feel about ourselves. Writers are telling me in their blog posts about how to somehow feel marvelous when I’m writing, no matter where I am in my WiP, no matter what obstacles I’m facing. Feel-good web sites are giving me advice …
A Scripted Maze 