Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 21

The Bleak Midwinter

 

1. Feb. 3 Group 2 - February can be a bleak month. How do you overcome periods of lethargy and re-energize yourself creatively and otherwise? 
 If there was ever a bleaker February, I don’t remember it. It isn’t lethargy I have to overcome; it’s rage. So in order to avoid the topic that brings that on, I’ll just go with the last part of the question; how I re-energize myself creatively and otherwise. The best way, of course, is to take a long, wonderful vacation. I’m thinking lying on a beach ...

Getting Creative in Gloomy February

February can be a bleak month. How do you overcome periods of lethargy and re-energize yourself creatively and otherwise? 
Brenda
Living in Canada, the winter months can be gloomy. At the darkest stretch, the sun sets about four-thirty in the afternoon, adding a few minutes of sunlight a day after the winter solstice, but it is still getting dark around five o'clock as I type. The sky is often overcast, and we usually have snow or frigid temperatures with the odd above-seasonal day. The warmer tem...

The Winter of My (Writerly) Discontent by Poppy Gee

Q: How does winter affect you and your writing? 
Reading the other authors’ essays about the merits of winter-writing has convinced me that if I ever get stuck with my writing, it’s not my fault, it’s because I live in a place that has an almost year-long summer! 
In short, winter doesn’t affect my writing habits. I write every day, regardless of the season. The only days I don’t try to write are when I’m spending time with my family on holidays or on busy weekends. But even then I might work on s...

Writing in a Winter Wonderland, by Catriona

 How does winter affect you and your writing?

Could be either - but it's CA

Scottish Me: I love winter. It's my favourite season. The light is beautiful. The shrubs in flower are all scented - daphne, witchhazel, forsythia . . . There's not a lot to do in the garden, so you never feel like you're scrambling. 

California Me: I love winter. It's my favorite season. The light is beautiful. How the frilly hat can there be flowers on lavendar and rosemary and gerbera and pelargonium and snapdragons . . ...

A storm's a-coming. Can't ignore it. by Eric Beetner

How does winter affect you and your writing?

In live in Southern California about a 4 minute drive over the hill to the beach. I play beach volleyball all year round. I haven’t seen snow on my front lawn in the 33 years I’ve lived in L.A. I grew up with actual seasons, both in the midwest and New England. Brutal cold winters, blizzards, shoveling out the car to get to work or classes. I know the suffering. I also know the coziest place on earth is to be warm by a fire while the wind howls outside...

Winter, the most misunderstood season

 

Howdoes winter affect you and your writing?

If you’re awriter, you are familiar with the fact that the seasons are metaphors for thestages of life. Winter is the time of scarcity, a time of stasis, a time forsilence, and a time for reflection. The repetition in that last sentence isboth rhetoric and an echo of Ecclesiastics. With the dying of the light comesreckoning, and we are uncomfortable with it, but for reasons I think most peopleignore.

 

I’d argue that weha...

Baby, It's Cold Outside, by Angela

 

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How does winter affect you and your writing?

Sister Souljah wrote a book called The Coldest WinterEver, a classic in the Black community. This is not the winter she meant,but I’m guessing plenty of folks would prefer her version at this point. It’scold! That’s a bit of an understatement. There was a time where only weNortherners understood the brutality, joy, and yes, beauty of the frigid wintermonths that could start as early as October and linger well into April,sometimes even May...

Who’d Want to Hide Such a Beautiful Face? from James W. Ziskin

Is there a movie better than the book? And name a book that you think defies adaptation?

When I was a young man, I was a film buff. A cinephile. I loved watching movies, especially foreign films and classics. Somewhere along the line I lost my enthusiasm for the seventh art, at least to the extent that I no longer enjoy sitting in movie theater seats that have been sat in by people I don’t know.

Anyway, back when I was a devotee, I used to say that great books rarely made great movies. And not-so-...

Roll ‘em or read ‘em

Is there a movie better than the book? And name a book that you think defies adaptation?

by Dietrich

I think it’s a tall order for a movie to be better than the book. While it’s a visual experience and can be well-acted and executed, the adaptation is a shortened version and many tasty parts found in the book often have to be left out. For instance, a novel can tell the reader what’s going on inside the characters’ heads, revealing their deepest thoughts and what their words aren’t saying. 

And vis...

Books vs. Movies

 

Movie V. BookTerry here, with our question this week: Is there a movie better than a book? And is there a book that defies adaptation? 
I have to go with “better” being an undefinable concept. Books allow the reader to use imagination to visualize characters and to gain insight into their thoughts and emotions. Movies rely on the screen writer’s and director’s interpretation of those elements. What may strike one moviegoer as an appalling interpretation of a book, another viewer may fin...