Archives

To Plot or Not to Plot | The Art & Craft of Writing Creatively

In response to the following post from Terri Giuliano Long, I've always felt I did my best work when either writing in a creative frenzy or writing to discover what I really think. In writing my novel I simply sat down and wrote, sometimes for twelve or more hours at a stretch. I worked without a plot, or even road map. Starting with a guy alone in a car, I thought, what should I have him do? It's a predicament writers of road novels often get themselves into. I thought, he's got to talk to someone, Read more [...]

The Great Canards of Creative Writing

Write What You Know Having read reams of online slush, I have labored through numerous manuscripts that give the lie to the principle of Write What You Know. IMHO, it leads to a lot of writing about mundane daily routines, what might be called the workplace novel, or perhaps, the house spouse novel, that could not be more atrocious as literary fiction. I cannot tell you how many novels I have glanced at that begin with waking up in the morning and getting breakfast together, or arriving at work Read more [...]