The Words I Hear

This week's inspiration is about the Potemkin villages in Russia. Probably the best joke ever.

Happy April Fools Day!

In honor of the day, I’d love to recount one of my favorite stories about the Potemkin village. It’s a real story, so it falls under “fact that inspires story” and took place in Russia during the reign of Queen Catherine II during her travels through Crimea after Russia annexed it from the Ottoman Empire. It’s all in the Wikipedia articlebut the gist of the story is that…

Weekly Inspiration: Fairy Tales in Real Life

While tracking down more information about the biological progression of language and fairy tales blog, I found a few other really cool articles that followed the thread of the fairy tales. To disseminate what I mean about “fairy tales in reality,” I found a few things that are suggestive of something magical in different parts of the world that offer inspiration for my own writing. I’m currently…

This week's inspiration is an article on the age of fairy tales. Get inspired!

This is a new segment I thought I’d add randomly throughout the week as a way of finding inspiration in weird little stories and articles all over the Internet. Sometimes I’ll find an image, if it’s particularly compelling, but most of the time I end up finding something interesting by going through a Facebook feed or through friends sending me interesting links.

This week, I wanted to highlight

What's in a Name? Why A Lot of Recent Bestsellers Have "Girl" in the Title

What’s in a name? Have you ever gone through a bookstore or perused the many book titles on Amazon and thought to yourself, “Who came up with this title? Better yet, who came up with this cover? I’ve read this book and it has nothing to do with ball gowns or staircases!”

From a purely creative standpoint, the publishing process of choosing a name and cover for a book all boils down to one very…

Day 2 Writing Day – Part 2

Confession time: I am one of those horrible people that says “I do not have time to write.” But I want to write. I call myself a writer and insist that others need to write every day, at least 100 useable words. Have I done this? No. Do I have a good reason not to?

Sort of. I’m moving next week so my place is a mess of boxes, scheduling, and realtors (yes, they are coming out of the walls,…

Using Character Description to Move Your Plot Along

Writing believable character descriptions is hard. I don’t really need to tell you that but it does get right to the heart of a big problem in writing. Part of the influence of bad writing stems from fanfiction writers going legit, although this post isn’t going to be about fanfiction writing. As a long-time former fanfiction writer myself, making the transition to writing non-fanfiction (and…

Day 1 Writing Day – Part 1

No time like the present to get started. Since I haven’t been regularly writing in months, I’m going to take baby steps and start with 500 words by the end of day today for the next week. If it’s too easy, I’ll raise my goal. If it’s too hard, I’ll lower it. How many words have you managed today?

Date: 2/9/2016

Time: 7:21 PM

78 / 500 (15.6%)

Source: Svenja Gosen’s blog – Word Count Meter. Found…

I’m In a Creative Writing/English Lit Writing Workshop Course. Does That Mean I Have an Editing Group?

Writing can be a lonely business. I know I’m preaching to the choir here but it bears repeating because we, as writers, sometimes don’t know how else to write except alone. But how do we improve? Getting outside help is one of the best ways to take your writing to the next level and make it less of the fantasy that it is in your head and more of the reality it could be. One of the most noted ways…

Week’s End Roundup

Ursula Le Guin

Happy end of the week to everyone! As this blog is new, I thought I’d have a spot where I could add a little something I found during the week. Since we don’t always have time to go through larger lists and read everything, it’ll be one interesting find during the week.

This week, I was surprised to find that one of the greats was giving away answers to questions from her amazing…

Writing: When It’s Not Just a Hobby Anymore

The difference between hobby and vocation is one of those things that is a tough question for most writers: when is it just for fun, when is it for profit, why can’t it be both? I got my start in writing fanfiction ages ago. I thought I started when I was about eleven years old but friends of mine have said they recall me writing even earlier in my life (and I believe them, since they loved to…