"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all."
-Richard Wright, American Hunger, 1977

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Creative Income

I've been reading a lot of books on writing lately (I rediscovered my local library) and doing some exercises. I think I've read too many in too short a time to really be able to review them, though. I got a book called A Passion for Narrative that I was hoping would give me a set of exercises that would help me develop Isaiah, but while the exercises were interesting and set up to fully develop a story, they required that one work with specific story elements rather than letting one develop one's own original work. When I mentioned that I was looking for a set of exercises that would help me develop a novel, DaWG S let me borrow her copy of The 2 Year Novel by Lazette Gifford. It looks good, so I'll be using that for awhile to see if it works for me.

I've been learning, though it's all still in the stage of bubbling around messily in my head rather than coalescing into anything I can express. Between BayCon and this I've really been focussed on absorption rather than production for the last month or so. I think I'm about ready to turn that around and start writing again.

1 comment:

Sharon said...

Love your description of " bubbling around messily in my head rather than coalescing". I know just what you mean when you say that! Wow, are you a writer or something?? *smile*