How To Think Sideways: Career Survival School For Writers

From the category archives:

Eureka!

Success with a truly cool twist.

April 12, 2010

A Boot Camp Student writes: So…yeah. It happened. I don’t remember whether I was already working on HTTS or not when I wrote the story. I suspect yes. By the way, for all other ESL writers: it is possible. The Latvian version that is also published there, is a self-made translation to my native language. [...]

Read the full article →

Is this how a movement begins?

April 3, 2010

This Sideways Student didn’t actually issue a challenge–all she did was to set a goal for herself. I am on lesson 13 of HTTS. I have set up my schedule so I will be done with my first draft of my novel by the end of April! I guess I am an April fool! My [...]

Read the full article →

Remember those grad novel blogs?

March 19, 2010

This Writers’ Boot Camps student entered the annual Pikes Peak Writers contest.  So, last night, she opened a particular email, and– Imagine my thrill to find out I’m one of three finalists in the SF/F/H category! I’ll find out later exactly where I’ve placed. . . . This is the book I posted chapter-by-chapter on [...]

Read the full article →

She’s cracked the code for writing exciting scenes.

March 12, 2010

This student of How To Think Sideways has found her flow. In the last two weeks I have developed a whole story from scratch, plot, scenes, characters and written over 12,000 words. I wrote 6 scenes yesterday over 5000 words in about five hours.  It is just flowing. I feel like after two and half [...]

Read the full article →

What’s in a Theme?

March 9, 2010

Very often, what’s in a theme is a huge, humbling surprise.  Your you was working out plot details and making sure each scene had a proper structure and stressing over margins or typeface. Your Muse was quietly revealing your heart, because that’s the beat she marches, slinks, bounces or tangos to. HTRYN’s worksheets on theme [...]

Read the full article →

Hey–How’d You Like to Build a World?

March 2, 2010

Don’t you love it when you learn how to fix a problem you didn’t even know you had?  That’s what happened for this HTRYN student: Okay, I was guilty of the “I don’t need this, my story is set in the here and now” mindset when I first read this lesson material.   BUT, I figured [...]

Read the full article →

Escalating Conflict–It’s a Good Thing.

February 24, 2010

When real life is peaceful, calm, serene, yet informative, we rejoice. When fiction is peaceful, calm serene, yet informative, we yawn, put down the book and go clean the gutters. Lesson 5 of How to Revise Your Novel analyzes the overall conflict as well as the scene conflict and then brainstorms it higher and tighter [...]

Read the full article →

Dreaming the Muse

February 16, 2010

This HTRYN student got an effortless insight, courtesy of the Muse who visits sleeping artists. I had an experience last night/this morning that will help me explore a sub-theme and may illuminate a lot of threads in my revision novel. . . . I dreamed. . . . In the dream, I felt a sense-of-wonder [...]

Read the full article →

Competition Deadline met with Grace.

February 9, 2010

This HTRYN student didn’t wait for the course to be complete–she has already begun to use her new insights in writing and submitting a short story. I have read the materials about promises, and applied them to that story. It was an absolute revelation! I was so happy to see that in most places my [...]

Read the full article →

The Happy Writer’s Weather Report

January 25, 2010

A student of How To Revise Your Novel reports: Today I moved on to Lesson 5 and after writing the first conflict on the first note card, the beginning of the story – the opening concept I had been struggling with since I began writing this book back in November – fell into place. At [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →