A. L. Kennedy’s 10 Rules for Writing Fiction These writing tips were gleaned from an interview A. L. Kennedy gave to the Guardian. Writer and performer, Alison Louise “A. L.” Kennedy is the author of 17 books: 6 literary novels, 1 science fiction novel, 7 short story collections, and 3 works of non-fiction. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and […]
Anne Enright’s Finest 10 Tips for Writing Fiction
In this humble offering before the next longer post, author Anne Enright, who was named the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for her novel, The Forgotten Waltz, and won the Man Booker Prize for her novel, The Gathering, shares ten writing tips gleaned from her fiction writing […]
9 Potent Ways to Use Music to Enhance Your Writing
Amp up your creativity and your sounds with these nine ways to enhance your writing using music. Plato said that ‘music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything,’ while Nietzsche believed that a “life without music is a mistake.” Much like writing, it can transport us to a […]
Madeleine L’Engle on the 3 Most Important Things for Writers
“I have advice for people who want to write. I don’t care whether they’re 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think […]
George Saunders’ Short Animated Documentary on the Art of Storytelling
“A good story is one that says, at many different levels, ‘we’re both human beings, we’re in this crazy situation called life, that we don’t really understand. Can we put our heads together and confer about it a little bit at a very high, non-bullshitty level?’ Then, all kinds of magic can happen.” ~ George Saunders […]
John Steinbeck’s 6 Tips for the Aspiring Writer
Creative Yin and Yang: Making Time for Writing While Riding the Waves of Creativity
Some days nothing we write seems good enough, other days, it’s as if the nine muses themselves have descended onto the page. After one of those magical writing days, we long for them all to be like that, to all be graced with exquisite inspiration and flow but every moment we dedicate to writing, no […]
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 […]