Writing has long been a tool for resisting and protesting tyranny, societal wrongs, and corrupt governments. With the latest crisis where children are being snatched from their parents seeking asylum, people are protesting from sea to sea. In fact, the country seems about to boil over from outrage, rage, and frustration. But luckily we’re writers […]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Jessica Page Morrell' Category
According to Markus Zusak
I like that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It’s probably what I like most about writing–that words can be used in a way that a child plays in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around. They’re the best moments in a day of writing–when an image appears that you […]
Read the rest of this entry »Words are All We Have: Maeinschein
Do you have a favorite color? Mine is green, but especially the shades of spring green found in the Pacific Northwest. I could rhapsodize for hours on the many shades and their shimmery magic. When I hike I’m always pausing to point out the light illuminating spring leaves. But then I often pause while noticing […]
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In the Eskimo language the words for to breathe and to make a poem are the same. Remembering this has been wildly helpful to me. It means a freeness to plunge in, almost like doing a finger painting. It’s a free flow, suspending fact, meaning, sanity, then seeing, in what pours out uncensored, what can […]
Read the rest of this entry »Margaret Atwood says,
“Writing has to do with darkness, and a desire or perhaps a compulsion to enter it, and, with luck, to illuminate it, and to bring something back out into the light.” ~ Margaret Atwood , Negotiating With the Dead If you’re an Atwood fan, here’s a thoughtful interview you might enjoy. And here’s information on […]
Read the rest of this entry »Tip for action scenes: read screenplays
I’ve coordinated a number of writing conferences and hosted best-selling and about-to-breakout authors as my keynote speakers. A few years back, above the sparkling Pacific the prolific and talented Chelsea Cain talked to writers about what she’d learned from writing bestsellers. One piece of her advice always stuck with me: Write the bare bones version of […]
Read the rest of this entry »that ethereal moment…
Writers and artists know that ethereal moment, when just one fleeting something–a chill, an echo, the click of a lamp, a question–ignites the flame of an entire work that blazes suddenly into consciousness. ~ Nadine C. Keels
Read the rest of this entry »Writing consoles
Rhythm, repetition, making patterns–these are not only important devices for shaping the strange and abstract instrument/object we call a poem or story, but they are craved as well because of our primordial need for reassurance, the sense of security we get from moving over the known. A mystery doesn’t lose power in revisiting. Writing is […]
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