Check out my article about crutch words over at Insecure Writers Support Group. Sleuthing out your crutch words will make you more secure. Promise!
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Jessica Page Morrell' Category
No regrets
Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth […]
Read the rest of this entry »Children with Eyes Wide Open
“Adults look at colors, yet do not see them. Adults perceive shapes, yet do not understand their speech. Adults live in light and from light, yet do not notice it at all. Adults cast long shadows, yet do not play with them. Adults take up much (indeed too much) space, yet never just for once […]
Read the rest of this entry »Reminder: I’ll be teaching at the Pennwriter’s Conference
Dates are May 14-17 Pittsburgh, PA On Thursday May 14 I’ll be teaching an all-day intensive The Anchor Scenes of Fiction that will clarify what happens next (and why)in a novel. Friday and Saturday I’ll be teaching Whispers: Theme and Premise in Fiction and What Writers Can Learn from Downton Abbey. You can find the […]
Read the rest of this entry »Really quick tip: Bring on the clowns
I’ve mentioned this before: a portion of your story’s scenes need to rise, to explode, to provide surprises the reader never saw coming. In these pull-out-the-stops scenes your characters can fumble, make mistakes, stage confrontations, discover dead bodies or that their beloved is sleeping around. Feature them stooping to new lows or achieving new highs. […]
Read the rest of this entry »Ted Hughes on investing heart
“That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armor, and the naked child is flung out into the world. That’s why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and […]
Read the rest of this entry »Ray Bradbury on feeding the muse
“It isn’t easy. Nobody has ever done it consistently. Those who try hardest, scare it off into the woods. Those who turn their backs and saunter along, whistling softly between their teeth, hear it treading quietly behind them, lured by a carefully acquired disdain. We are of course speaking of The Muse. The Feeding of […]
Read the rest of this entry »April is National Poetry Month
“…When people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read in school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the […]
Read the rest of this entry »What’s your story?
“What’s your story? It’s all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To […]
Read the rest of this entry »Apologies
My apologies for my absence from this site. I have been occupied, preoccupied with my elderly parent’s tenuous situation (they live in a remote area of northern Wisconsin) and my mother’s health. I traveled there to help with my mother’s end of life care. She died on March 7 of congestive heart failure and the […]
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