Joyce Carol Oates is an acclaimed author of more than forty novels and countless short stories. She won the National Book Award for her novel, Them and has been thrice-nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Here she offers the following writing tips: Write your heart out. The first sentence can be written only after the last sentence has been […]
Writing Fiction: 10 Travel-Inspired Storytelling Techniques
Most people like to know where they are going, have a route, a map, when travelling or heading into the wilderness, and it is the same with storytelling. Yet, like travelling, sometimes the magic only happens when you deviate a little from the plan, let go, loosen up and allow yourself to write untethered by a […]
How to Beat Writer’s Block: 5 Ways to Face the Blank Page
Just as an artist wouldn’t be able to rework a blank canvas, a writer cannot edit a blank page. Making mistakes is part of the process; don’t smother your creativity out of fear and doubt. Everyone has ebbs and flows in their creativity. Just as bamboo is strong but bends and sways in the breeze, be flexible […]
Margaret Atwood’s Ten Tips for Writers
Margaret Atwood is widely known for her award-winning book, The Handmaid’s Tale. While she is mostly known as a novelist, she has also published many volumes of poetry, including poems inspired by myths and fairytales. Here she offers writers some practical [and perhaps not-so-practical] writing tips: 1. Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the […]
8 Ways to Reignite Your Passion for Writing and Write [Even If You Don’t Feel Like It]
In a brilliant interview in The Paris Review, E. B. White said, “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.” To allow the seeds of inspiration grow into tiny shoots and push through the soil, like the magnificent miracles they are, you need to metaphorically water them […]
The Tao of Creativity: Taoist Techniques to Help Your Writing and Art
Taoism at its core is about living life with harmony and ease, and with as much joy in the process as possible. Most people have heard of Tai Chi and Chi Kung but there are numerous techniques within the Taoist system that can help both you and your creativity to flourish. The following extended offering […]
8 Ways to Guarantee a Productive Writing Day
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” as Annie Dillard so aptly once said. Yet with our days now busier than ever, and demands placed upon us as equally extensive, being able to squeeze as much writing from the limited time we have becomes all the more paramount. Everyone […]
Anaïs Nin on How We Write to Heighten Our Own Awareness of Life
“We write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write […]
Overcome Writing Doubt: 5 Effective Psychology Techniques
“Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being the knowledge of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the […]
Writing, Wit and Wisdom from Mark Twain
Needing no introduction (but having one anyway), Mark Twain aka Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was a novelist, literary critic, short story writer, essayist, lecturer, joker, pontificator and all round commenter on the great theatre that is life. Growing up with 19 cats can do that to you. Both his birth and death coincided with a passing […]