“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 »Archive for the 'Jessica Page Morrell' Category
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 […]
Read the rest of this entry »Quick take: Violence = consequences
I’ve worked on a number of manuscripts where violence happens on the page and the story just sort of moves along. Violence requires consequences–injuries, trauma, legal repercussions, banishment. It also requires enough back story to support the character committing violence. If a sweet young thing punches out an adversary, we need to believe she’s physically […]
Read the rest of this entry »Saved by Stories
Just after my seventh Christmas our family moved into a bigger house. By then my youngest brother Colin had been born on Halloween and the eight of us had outgrown our modest three-bedroom. The move happened over the holiday break, amid the bitter cold, my father and uncles still young men hauling sagging, stained mattresses, […]
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