Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 16

Read, Write, Read, Repeat by Poppy Gee

Has being a writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now?

Current read: The Bluff by Joanna Jenkins. Previous read: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore.

I read more crime novels now that I've been published as acrime fiction writer. Before I wrote crime, I used to read mainly literaryfiction. But I always liked scary movies, especially dark psychologicalthrillers. My favourite movie as a kid was the Freddy Krueger series: a monsterwho appears in your dreams and kills you while you...

THE EDINBURGH MURDERS by Catriona

 Has being a writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now? 

Today it has! Reviews!

Just kidding. I never read reviews. But what I'm trying to say is that my new book is out today. In the UK only, mind you. But keep reading if you're in the US and you're interested. 

Buy links
Isn't it lovely? I'm very verbal but even I've got enough visual literacy to know that that is a great jacket. Edinburgh purists will wince, because it doesn't depict an actual street in the city; it's three buildi...

How I read by Eric Beetner

 Has being a writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now?

I’d like to think I read the same way as I did before I became a published author. I think reading “like a writer” is something that lives inside those of us who decide to take the plunge, even from a young age. 

It is similar to the way I watched films in my youth. The difference I saw in people like me who chose to attend film school, is that we saw beyond the light and shadow on the screen. I wanted to know the mechanism be...

Reader, Writer, Writer, Reader

 

Has being a writer changed the way youread? What are you reading now?

Familiar with theimage of the snake eating its own tail?

 

It’s called the ouroboros, and it’s also a concise metaphorfor neurosis and obsession. A Hungarian scientist named August Kekulé saw themythological creature in a dream, and it inspired his model of benzene. Insteadof a linear chain of carbon atoms, Kekulé imagined a circle, and dashes around the hexagon indicated the type of bondsbetwee...

I could read for hours...

 

Has beinga writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now?

Books area magic portal. I read that somewhere, I can’t say where. Probably a meme. Butit’s true. I learned this as a little girl growing up in the inner city of Cleveland,Ohio where things were so tough outside my window, but everything I ever daredto dream in between the pages of a good book.  I’ve come to rely on their magic my wholelife. For escapism, for learning, and sometimes as my only friend (high schoolwas t...

Do you have an idea? I have twenty. On inspiration and crankiness, by Harini Nagendra

Not "where" do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations?

One of the professors in the institution where I did my PhD - the Indian Institute of Science - was infamous for his habit of deflating students, puncturing their excitement and generally running them down. 

"XXX!" one of his students was said to have shouted, running towards him down the long stone corridors at top speed, waving his hands. "I have an idea." 

XXX sneered at him. "One idea? ...

How Now from James W. Ziskin

Not "where" do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations?

Boko, thinking up ideas over tea

Ideas come, ideas go 

But HOW they do it I don’t know

They pop up here, they turn up there 

They seem to spring up everywhere

While we’re at home, at work, in bed

Or idling at a light that’s red

They often take us by surprise

In stealthy mode and in disguise

But HOW they do it none can tell

Which may in fact be just as well

For when we try to understand

The secret of ...

Peeking into the Process

Not "where" do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations?

by Dietrich

There’s no single way — ideas come from images or memories, and sometimes they come from eavesdropping on conversations.

My novel Zero Avenue began with a single scene in mind: a young woman with an electric guitar slung over her shoulder, standing in the dim light of Vancouver’s punk scene in the late ’70s. I put myself back in that time and dusted off the old Ramones albums an...

Not Where, but How

 

Terry here with our question of the week: Not “where do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations? 
 I love this topic! 
 For many writers ideas come thick and fast. The trick is to find the ideas that have “legs,” i.e., ideas that you can live with over the course of a few months, ideas that seem like they will strike a chord with readers, and ones that you can successfully mold into a publishable work of fiction. 
But the question is how do tho...

Getting into the How of Creativity

Not "where" do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations?

Brenda at the keyboard.

This question gets to the nuts and bolts of creativity and how it works. I'm not convinced that I can provide any concrete answers because I'm honestly not certain how or where some of my ideas come from. However, I'd say that everything in my life's experiences - where I go, what I read, conversations I've had, things I've witnessed - stay somewhere in my brain and...