creativity
-
Brick by Brick: The Value of Writing Exercises
If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health. – Hippocrates Exercise can easily be defined as something one has to do in order to improve oneself in a particular area. That sounds rather broad, so to put it into perspective, we do physical exercise in order to keep fit and healthy, we exercise proper hygiene in order to stay clean, we exercise discipline in order to keep our lives and our affairs in order. And, of course, if we are writers, we have a few exercises we perform to…
-
What’s the Next Step?: Knowing What to Do With Your Writing
So you’re done with writing your piece. What next? The answer may sound easy, but the path that you undertake to get to wherever you want to get definitely isn’t. There are a lot of options that you can choose from after finishing your piece (for the sake of this article, let us assume that it is your first draft). It is important that you should know what your options are, and where these may lead you. There is one very, very important step that you should go through, though, regardless of what you plan to do with your piece: Leave your work alone for a while. Well, it is an option, although it doesn’t sound like something…
-
Critical Concerns: Taking and Giving Criticism in Writing
Criticism is a difficult thing to take, sometimes, especially if you’re particularly proud of the piece you’ve written. The basic thing to understand, though, is that not everyone will be pleased by what you’ve done, and often people will pick out one small detail they find negative in your piece and focus on that, eventually overshadowing and overriding any – and perhaps all – meritorious things that your piece has. It’s pretty difficult, as well, to criticize, especially if you know the effects of criticism or if you’re not entirely confident that your critique is value-adding. To be an effective writer and critic, though, you must look at the piece…
-
Solitary Confinement: Making People Understand the Writer’s Needs
I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. – Henry David Thoreau Making art, in general, is a solitary process, and we have established that several times in previous posts. It’s an experience as individual as eating – you are a self-contained unit as an artist, and while you are encouraged to show your work to others so that you can defend it and improve it, taking other people’s pieces of advice is not required. And this is probably one of the reasons why artists – in our context, writers – lock themselves up in their rooms for ridiculously long periods of time, possibly ignoring fundamental needs…
-
From inspiration to idea: how to find the write topic for your book
You can write an article here…
