Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts by Mina Witteman

Gone Writing – Day 4

Posted on January 5, 2016

Writers and artists know that when the muse visits there’s not much you can do but follow her. Or him. I know the famous offspring of Zeus and Mnemosyne are women – Calliope, Clio, Euterpe, Terpsichore, Erato, Melpomene, Thalia, Polyhymnia and Urania, for those who like to polish up their knowledge of Greek mythology – but my muse is a man. Not sure how that happened but it might be the reason why I so often write from a male perspective, why my protagonists are mostly men or boys. Male or female, when the call of the muse comes the writer has no other option than to obey. Or fail his project.   Last night my muse’s call came at 3:00 am (or maybe it was jet lag calling, or the story…

Categories: A Bit of Everything

Gone Writing – Day 3

Posted on January 4, 2016

Yesterday, I wrote so many words and so fast my keyboard almost caught fire. My brain shot an unstoppable flow of words down my nerves to my fingers and ordered them to pound away. And while I was pounding away, I thought about how that works, inside my brain? How does my brain tell my fingers what to do, which key to tap, which word to form, what scene to narrate?   Readers often tell me that my writing is very visual. Very sensory too. In almost all reviews of my Dutch middle grade adventure Boreas and the Seven Seas, for instance, critics touch upon the fact that the narrative provokes the feeling that the wind actually blows through the reader’s hair, that the reader can almost literally feel the boat rock on…

Categories: A Bit of Everything

Gone Writing – Day 2

Posted on January 3, 2016

In the previous post I laid out my plans to sound out cafés to write in San Francisco, but yesterday’s find was such a brilliant one – one that brought me a scrumptious breakfast bagel, a delicious salad for lunch, a gallon of tea, and six hours of solid writing – that my muse ordered me to stay put. And what kind of writer would I be if I challenged my muse? Right. So I stay put and find myself again at the Café Francisco on the second day of my writing journey. It’s morning still but I have already written 1,400 words. Good words. Great words. Some might fall in the revision battle, a lot might fall in the revision battle, but for now they feel good. The story flows.…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, YA books

Gone Writing – Day 1

Posted on January 2, 2016

Day 1 on of my writing adventure in San Francisco. Or, if I would be honest, day 2. But I’m a writer and I tend to fictionalize everything, including my life. Right? So we skip January 1 – also because what more can you say about the first day of the year when you spend it in a plane? – and jump to January 2: Day 1.   I’m sounding out cafés to write. This is my first one. Café Francisco on the corner of Powell and Francisco. I’m sitting in a booth, hidden from the patrons by the coffee machine, and flanked by five young adults chatting away in the booth next to me; three quiet-ish boys and two chatty girls. ‘I know…

Categories: A Bit of Everything

Happy 2016!

Posted on December 31, 2015

Wishing all my friends and fans a splendid 2016 filled with love and happiness. Stay true to yourself and to your art. Reach for the stars and reach for what is hidden inside yourself. Keep wandering and explore life beyond your limits. Be gentle. To your heart. To your soul. And to the world.       (pages from different logbooks by the artist Viktor IV (Walter Karl Glück)

Categories: A Bit of Everything

Author’s Anniversary

Posted on December 16, 2015

With all the writing and organizing I did this year, I completely missed the fact that I have been an author for 10 years this year. My debut came out in 2005. De wraak van Deedee (Deedee’s Revenge) is the story of 10-year-old Deedee and her mean, heartless, blowing-up-frogs brother Matthias, who locks her in a sewage pipe on a military assault course. Deedee can’t tell her parents what her brother did without being punished herself for being on the strictly off limits military fields. Her revenge comes later and is sweet. Or not?

Categories: A Bit of Everything

My Muse

Posted on December 12, 2015

When my muse rests his head and leaves me for the day oblivious of what he instilled oblivious  of the flow that ramps up inside of words and scenes that burn their way into my story my fingers fly to a rhythm that sends my brain into a trance away from the world sequestered to those who can’t read my mind liberated to those who can When my muse rests his head and leaves me for the day my fire blazes

Categories: A Bit of Everything