1. From Boing-Boing, visual cues to who’s carrying a handgun. Need to describe the body language in your scene? Check out the handy reference guide.
2. From Genreality, Bob Mayer on lessons learned from Johnny Cash.
3. From Wil Wheaton, an article aimed at performing artists but you could change “perform” to “write” and change “audition” to “write queries/proposals” and it’s badly needed advice for writers.
Dangerous Lover, Take Me Lover #4, has released! If you’ve missed any of the series, now is a great time to shop and save, because to celebrate the brand-new My Bookstore and More launch Samhain is giving you 20% your total purchase. Check out the new bookstore, many features have been added to improve your e-shopping experience.
Dangerous Lover features a sexy firefighter, danger, and motorcycle sex. You know you want it!
Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: “Since then, I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”
The above quote is just one of the reasons I consider this book an essential part of my writing library. Bradbury talks about the alternative path to two extremes; writing for market recognition and writing for literary recognition. Good stuff.
This morning, I did not take antibiotics or pain killers (other than Tylenol) for the first time in what seems like forever. I’m not going to run any marathons any time soon, but I can walk around the house and yard without falling over and I spent the morning at my desk writing and watching bluebirds around the bird feeder.
If bluebirds know the key to happiness, it apparently involves a lot of scampering around and being curious and finding sunny spots on chilly days and investigating roof gutters, because you never know what might be in there. Which sounds an awful lot like what Ray Bradbury advises for creative people.
I peeked into a gutter of memory this week and found something very interesting. It’s the seed of a story. Finding something like that and pursuing it makes me as happy as a busy bluebird on a spring day. If that’s the bluebird of happiness, I’ll take it with a side of Bradbury’s Zen.
1. Labeling starter pots with Post-It notes is living dangerously. I hope I remember which are the Romas and which are the Beefsteaks, but if the Post-Its get switched, we may not know until there are actual tomatoes on the vine.
2. 4 yr olds make enthusiastic helpers.
3. Enthusiasm may extend to digging up seeds to see if they’ve sprouted yet.
4. It’s very hard to guess how many of each plant I really should have started. We may not end up with enough pie pumpkins. Or too much eggplant.
5. It’s also possible that 10 sweet pepper plants is overkill, but at least some of those should survive the enthusiastic 4 yr old.
I skimmed Twitter this morning, and random nouns from people I follow leaped out at me and made me laugh at their juxtaposition. So I tweeted: “I could write a really interesting poem with words I just read in my twitter stream. (coffee, bakery, vaginas, full moon, hot, synopsis)” Then I thought, hey, why not do that? I need a warmup.
First I used each noun as the last word in a line:
I have my morning coffee
I wish I was at a bakery
Why are people talking about vaginas?
It must be a full moon
I think today’s going to be hot
Glad my book already has a synopsis
Then I used the same nouns as the first word in a line:
Coffee kickstarts my morning
Bakery indulgences dance in my head, but they’ll have to remain a fantasy
Vaginas have gone mainstream, that’s reality
Full moon images on romance novel covers even hint at female power and the beast
Hot stuff, heady, except do we want to tame the beast or be the beast?
Synopsis for that book hasn’t been written yet
I think the second version’s more interesting. Using the words as a jumping-off point instead of a target may lead to more creative results, and that alone is something to experiment with.
Next time you’re looking for a writing warmup, why not harvest Twitter for a list of nouns or verbs?
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