Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 57
July 7, 2023
Tell the Fucking Truth, by Josh Stallings
Give us your writer’s manifesto.

Ok…
Fiction is the lie I use to tell the truth.
This has been my motto since I started writing. I thought it was wise and therefore by discovering it I by extension must be wise. Then the internet came along with is damn fact checking. And I discovered this statement about truth has many variations and has been around a long time.
In1923 Pablo Picasso said to a reporter, “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to under...
July 6, 2023
Happy Birthday! by Catriona
I'm going off piste today, ignoring the question and choosing instead to say a slightly belated happy birthday to a dear old friend. The NHS, Britain's health service, was 75 yesterday.

Now, it's not as strange as it might seem for me to be celebrating a government welfare programme. For one thing, I'm a raging pinko (like that's breaking news). Also five of my family are or were NHS medical professionals. Not to mention the fact that the NHS - in the form of the doctor's surgery and pharmaceutic...
July 5, 2023
No,no,no...yes! by Cathy Ace
Give us your writer’s manifesto.
Easy: I don’t have one. (At least, I didn’t haveone until I wrote this blog post! Be sure to read to the end…)

Freeman of the City of London,
in recognition of my services to marketing
Why? My pre-fiction-writing background is inmanagement and marketing, where my life was full of helping clients craft theircorporate mission statements, so I now absolutely avoid anything of the sort.
Again, why? I found that most m...
July 4, 2023
Wild Horses by Gabriel Valjan

Q: Give us yourwriting manifesto.
The idea of declaring a manifestobrings to mind the image of some huckster in a public square politicking,kissing babies, and glad-handling the constituency for a vote on Election Day.Writing is a such a solitary act, the odds of recognition slim, and the tastesof the reading public fickle as to induce despair. Too much time alone, theself-talk can invite delusions of grandeur and self-importance. I’m a bit ofcurmu...
July 3, 2023
Thinking about why I do what I do
Q: Give us your writing manifesto.
-from Susan
“Manifesto: a public declaration of policy and aims.”

(Who asks a question like that?) For writers, I guess it means what we’re committed to in our work and how we aim to achieve it? In an effort not to sound pompous or self-aggrandizing, I guess what I want is to put on paper the kinds of stories about people that show them in three dimensions, often under stress.
We are all so complex, a mix of high and less high ideals, strong and weak in our ...
June 30, 2023
Under the Influence
by Abir
Has an outside influence ever crept into your writing?
I’m not sure how to answer this question. In the general sense, everything I write is influenced by external forces and factors and people. I write about things that make me angry. I write from a position where my politics, morals, ethics are the result of external influences. I expect the same is true of pretty much everyone.
I suspect the question is more about the influence of other writers and other creative types – playwrights, ...
June 29, 2023
Who Wants to Listen to Disposable Music? from James W. Ziskin
Has an outside influence ever crept into your writing?
Of course outside influences have found their way into my work.
It’s impossible for writers to avoid it. And, in fact, if they somehow managed to shut out the world and all its influences, I doubt their writing would be of any interest to us. Our ideas and style are surely shaped by everything we hear, see, and read.
Take language, for instance. I don’t write books and stories in my own idiolect, after all. I use a more-or-less standard Englis...
June 28, 2023
Outside influences
Has an outside influence ever crept into your writing?
by Dietrich
I remember influences from my past. Growing up, there were many books that stayed with me long after I read them: Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Outsiders, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and so many more. And there was the music I grew up with. Those were some big influences. I suppose everything going on around us now can be an influence one way or another, good or bad. And with that, I think it’s a good ide...
June 27, 2023
Influence of Other Writers
June 27 7 CM topic:Terry here, talking about "outside" influences on my writing.
When I was a young writing student, I took a workshop from an esteemed writer. I turned in a short story and he gently said, “This is a wonderful story, but we already have stories by Eudora Welty.” Guilty as charged. I was so enamored of her stories (still am) that I copied her style.

June 25, 2023
Finding Voice
Has an outside influence ever crept into your writing?
Please describe a scene from your latest novel that you’re particularly proud of. Or better yet, why not share it?Okay, so these are really two separate questions, but I figure why not answer both choices? It's summer and I have nothing but time.
I would wager that a lifetime of reading means that outside influences have formed, influenced and crept into my writing. I believe this is a good thing. It's not that I've copied another writer's wor...
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