Kristen Lamb asked an interesting question on her blog last week, Are We Born to Create? Her posts often make me think and inspire my own posts here. (Her unofficial muse skill is one of the reasons I’ve dubbed her “awesome-dipped-in-glitter” (TM). *smile*) More specifically, she wondered if creative people […]
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This must be the week for me stepping into controversial topics. It’s a good thing I’m still wearing my flameproof jacket from my last post on plot vs. character. *smile* It’s been a while since Meghan Cox Gurdon’s article at the Wall Street Journal and her contention that young adult (YA) […]
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Today’s post is part of the #PotterChat blog hop, a collection of fantastic blogs, Twitter chats, and prizes. Check out Susan Sipal’s post at Harry Potter for Writers for all the details. For those who didn’t win a prize in my Milestone Blogiversary Contest, you might want to complete the scavenger […]
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*whew* I officially made it to the one-year mark for this blog. I thought reaching this point would be a lot harder than it was. Life is often that way. We put off something we dread, and then when we finally buckle down to do it, we wonder why we […]
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I’m still at Disneyland, so I have another guest joining us today. This is the second installment of a new feature here on my blog: Interview with a…Muse (because interviewing our characters is just too sane). After I had so much fun with my Do You Have a Muse? post, […]
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“Hey, Jami, now that you have a bazillion things to do and no time to get it all done, what are you going to do?” “I’m going to Disneyland!” That’s right. I threw up my hands and decided everything could wait a week while I head to Disneyland with the […]
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Wait…what? Well, we want to make our antagonist good for our story anyway. *smile* Kristen Lamb has been running a fantastic series on antagonists (Part One, Part Two, Villains, Balancing Evil, Inner and Outer Demons). She shares more gems than I can capture here, so definitely check out her posts. For […]
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When we first get an idea for a story, the characters who will populate that story often start out shadowy and vague. Either before the writing process (if we’re plotters) or during the writing process (if we’re pantsers), we have to develop those characters into something solid and colorful. We […]
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All writers get their ideas from somewhere. The question is—where, or what, is that somewhere? I don’t believe muses are entities like those venerated in Ancient Greece. However, when my subconscious comes up with things I never saw coming and never could have consciously created in a million years, it’s […]
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Lately I’ve been struck by how similar music is to writing. Both arts use a non-visual medium to create an emotion. And often, just like writing, music is meant to create movies in our mind for a do-it-yourself music video. If you’ve ever watched a movie with the sound turned […]
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