When I moved into an apartment by the Maritsa River in Plovdiv, I became fixated on the trees that lined it. They made me feel something, a seemingly unfounded melancholy. And I knew that one day I would use them for a story. Because fiction is much stronger when the writing is specific, I knew…
What is a motif?
Understanding the motifs in your writing will help your creative process and how you talk about and sell your work. In this post, I’ll define a motif, show how it differs from a theme, and then suggest how you might use a motif in a story. A motif is a dominant or recurring idea with…
On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry.
In his book On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, Friedrich Schiller made a distinction between ‘naive’ and ‘sentimental’ poets. Schiller’s categorization is not about the poetry itself, the themes within the poems, or the content, but about the poets themselves. He views them as contrasting personalities who represent two opposing sides of creativity like Kant’s antinomies. If you’ve heard this before, you’ll…
What does Orwellian mean?
Another entry on the site explores the term Kafkaesque. I now want to spend some time with something else mentioned within that post, which is Orwellian. It’s a label with which many of you are probably familiar, but, like Kafkaesque, it can be misused, especially to make a rash and unfocused politically charged point. So let’s…
NaNoWriMo 2021: The End of the Road.
This year, I participated in NaNoWriMo 2021 for the first time. I’ve written around seven novels in my life. However, this experiment was the first time I tried to write an entire book in one month. The good news is that I now have a new 50,000-word novel—my eighth novel, still unnamed. I titled it…
Writing a novel in one month – halfway through!
Phew, for a minute then, I lost myself. But, I guess that’s to be expected when you’re writing a novel in one month. I’m not sure when and I’m not sure how, but I’ve caught up with the goal. On the 9th day, a writer needs to have 15,003 words down to be on track,…
Questions writers should ask themselves.
I’ve collected this list of questions writers should ask themselves through a combination of research and experience. You may have read some of these before, and maybe even thought about them, but it’s never a bad time to go over them again. I sat and thought about each one again myself while compiling this list:…
NNWM: The First Five Days.
My NaNoWriMo (NNWM) is in full swing now. I’m approaching the end of the first week, and I’m beginning to get somewhere. Here are a few of my notes from days 3, 4, and 5 (yesterday), sharing my process and progress. Day 3 of NNWM After the 3rd day, I had almost 2800 words down…
Day Two of NaNoWriMo.
I was pleased with myself for writing 550 words and 550 good words, too. But that puts me behind schedule on day two of NaNoWriMo. I need to have 3334 words down by the end of day two, which leaves me 2784 words short. I intend to catch up tomorrow, and I’m going to help…
Day One of NaNoWriMo.
To achieve my 50,000-word goal, I need to write 1667 words every single day in November. But day one of NaNoWriMo started rough. I spent a few precious hours after work starting and scrapping all 750 words of my story. It just wasn’t suitable for my character and my writing style. I wrote in the…