Advice for Writing, Editing, Reading, and Life.
New posts on Mondays (for non-fiction) or Fridays (for fiction)
Anatomy of Storytelling: Do Stories Require Language?
Imagine that meaning is water. To know how much water you have, you need a system of measurement. To move the water from place to place, you need a bucket. Until you put your story into a language, it cannot be carried by someone else.
Anatomy of Storytelling: How Do You Tell a Story?
Anyone can tell a story. All of us do it daily. But not everyone can tell a story that will stick with the audience for years to come. If storytelling is the primary purpose of language (which, I’d argue it is), and language is the primary characteristic that separates us from animals (which, I’d argue it is) …
Isn’t it worthwhile to be good at it?
Ten Original Prompts to Get You Writing
As a rule of thumb, if you struggle with writer’s block, the worst possible solution is to stop writing and wait for inspiration. The only way to overcome writer’s block is to ignore it and push through. However, if you truly have no idea how to press on in a project, it can be really helpful to take a break from that project and write something totally different as a sort of “palate cleanser.”
With that in mind, here are five wildly different prompts to help you get writing again.
Five Exercises to Make Writing Easier (and More Fun)
Writing is hard. At times it’s brutally hard. The sense of awe and dread from staring at the cursor as it blinks defiantly on a blank page intimidates even seasoned writers at times. If you find yourself avoiding writing because it feels too difficult, but somewhere deep down you still want to write, try these exercises.