Category Archives: Creative Writing

Realize that your mind is a narrative-generating machine. That is why narratives exist in the first place: because they mirror the processes of the mind. But the mind is also a repository of topical information – subject matter – and … Continue reading →

Here is a writing prompt picture I posted recently and the amazingly creative response by writer Bill Williams Bill Williams – This is actually pretty easy to explain. *sips coffee* The cats in the front are feline overlords. They were … Continue reading →

One of the writers I coach recently wrote to me about getting drowned in a sea of ideas for his story, unable to organize his material, make choices, or more forward. Here is the note I wrote him in response … Continue reading →

I’ve been teaching creative writing now for more that twenty-five years, and here are my best tips for starting your new writing year: First, schedule your writing time like you would a dentist’s appointment. Why?  Because as Dorothy Parker once … Continue reading →

Some writers tend to create characters that are more or less the same age as themselves. Other writers populate their stories with characters of all ages but have them all act as if they are the same age as the … Continue reading →

A common misconception sees genre as a fixed list of dramatic requirements or a rigid structural template from which there can be no deviation. Writers laboring under these restrictions often find themselves boxed-in creatively. They become snared in the Genre … Continue reading →

The whole thing to keep in mind is that the passion and the structure of stories work in tandem, but not as partners. Like our own reason and emotion, sometimes they agree, sometimes they are at war, but mostly they … Continue reading →