Scrumptious Gold

My little sister gave me a card with the following nugget of wisdom from one Polly McGuire: "Stories are like fairy gold. The more you give away, the more you have."

I suppose for scribblers that's a bit like having a cake, and eating it, too-- writing stories and reveling as the audience gobbles them up. But even better is when a reader gets to the end of a story and flicks aside the last period like a stray crumb, ready for another slice of syllables!

In the words of Oliver Twist, "Please Sir, I want some more." That's how I feel about stories like Kenneth Oppel's Airborn trilogy.

Chivalry--The Word

I'm a big fan of Paulo Coelho, especially his book The Alchemist! Today he had a stelliferous post about the Prayer Book of Medieval Chivalry I thought I'd share.

Enjoy!

Crash/Reboot

(Somehow I find this Stuart's sign highly profound).


Pitches, synopses and outlines make writing a story seem so tidy and self-contained. But alas, obsessive organization only gets me so far! Especially with my current draft. It's much more of a crash/reboot process. The story keeps evolving. I guess what I'm (re)learning is that stories don't get written in comfort zones with lemonade stands along the way. There are cliffs with an 1000 mile drop in confidence. Sometimes even the creativity evaporates between the sentences and leaves nothing but a dumb strand of ellipses like a dead brain's yawn... I have to be willing to sky dive after the syllables. Rethink the word! Even the Childlike Empress needs a new name now and again, after all.

As Nathan Bransford counsels, "Keep writing."