Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 212

Otherworld

"How do you keep the balance between that little world in your head and the real one?"
It does not seem to be a problem, at this point. Maybe someday I'll have to worry, if I start calling my husband Dave instead of Dan, or thinking my Toyota Corolla is an unmarked cruiser.
I think the balance was more difficult in the beginning (a long time ago) when the world I had invented was still swirling in the mists of creation. Then I thought about it all the time, and it became more real than reality...

Keeping the Doors Open

Q: How do you keep the balance between that little world in your head and the real one?
-from Susan


A: What? You mean the one in my head isn’t real?
Once a story gets into my head and I start telling it, it’s as real as the life off the page most of the time. Exceptions: dental work, grandkids’ birthdays, and bill-paying. I don’t seem to have much of a problem going through the door into either world and I rarely have to slam the door behind me. In recent months, political anguish has, I admit,...

Present And Accounted For

Are there tricks you use to get yourself into that space where everything just flows onto the page?

The Muses. So vital. I've oft considered erecting a shrine to them, but then Los Angeles has enough already. I'm a member of a bunch, like The Broad, LACMA, The Getty Villa. Those will do in a pinch.

I can't say I have any particular tricks. I meditate and chant daily, but I do that regardless of my writing tasks. I wish I had a cool object or activity to help trigger the state of the groove. Tak...

No Apples. No Bath. No White Coat.

by Alan

Agatha Christie fueled the muse by munching apples in the bathtub, Jack Kerouac typed On the Road on an endless scroll. James Joyce laid on his stomach in bed, wearing a white coat, holding a blue pencil. Are there tricks you use to get yourself into that space where everything just flows onto the page?

Oh, yes. I dive into my bag of tricks daily, trying to get into that elusive “zone.” Here’s my fancy routine:

I go to my bedroom office.

I sit and turn on my computer.

When it boots up...

Whatever works

by Dietrich Kalteis
Agatha Christie fueled the muse by munching apples in the bathtub, Jack Kerouac typed On the Road on an endless scroll. James Joyce laid on his stomach in bed, wearing a white coat, holding a blue pencil. Are there tricks you use to get yourself into that space where everything just flows onto the page?
I start writing between four and five every morning, with music playing through the headphones. Maybe that’s a little strange, but it’s something I started doing years ago wh...

Comfy cozy does it.

By R.J. Harlick

Agatha Christie fueled the muse by munching apples in the bathtub, Jack Kerouac typed On the Road on an endless scroll. James Joyce laid on his stomach in bed, wearing a white coat, holding a blue pencil. Are there tricks you use to get yourself into that space where everything just flows onto the page?
Maybe if I dyed my hair purple and wore fluffy pink rabbit slippers with scarlet paisley tights and flung a feather boa around my neck, the muse might flow. Or what about a bottl...

Getting in The Zone

I’m writing about tricks I use to get myself into the space where everything flows onto the page: the zone.        Terry Shames
My best trick for getting into a writing zone, isn’t a trick at all, it’s a discipline. If I roll out of bed, grab a cup of tea and head straight for the computer somewhere around six AM, words pour onto the page. I did that for my first and second books in the Samuel Craddock series, and my drafts were written in a matter of weeks....

New York, New York

by Paul D. Marks

Double Header today:

Game 1: New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town. The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down. Or is it the other way around? We just spent a week in New York City and I’m still not sure.  (Well, I am, but it plays better the other way.) And in Game 2 (later in this piece) I’ll talk a little about place and location in my writing as we’ve been doing this week on the blog.

Amy (the wife) and I spent last week in New York City (New York City!). It came up ver...

And I ask myself: how did I get here?

Q: Do you or your favourite authors use setting as character?
A: I never know what it means when people say "setting as character".  But I can say that my favourite authors use setting brilliantly and make fictional places real.
I've never been to Minnesota but when I get there I'll happily leave the Twin Cities behind to visit Lake Wobegon. I must have read a hundred of Garrison Keillor's stories before I realised that might be a problem. 
And when we got lost in Maine a few years bac...

Location, Location, Location….by Cathy Ace

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