A big chunk of my writer friends ‘do’ NaNoWriMo again this year, National Novel Writing Month. I suspect most people are familiar with the concept: write a novel of at least 50,000 words in one month, starting November 1 and ending November 30. Some of my friends breeze through this year’s NaNoWriMo, others struggle with every word. Me? I’m skipping NaNoWriMo altogether. Not because I don’t like challenges. I LOVE a good challenge. I LOVE to win, too, and in the run-up to NaNoWriMo, I was filled with eager anticipation. Another chance to push out a novel, another chance to show that I have a writer’s stamina, an artist’s perseverance. While thinking up a plot for my next NaNoWriMo novel, I took a good look at…

Categories: Books, Children's books, Thrillers, YA books

Tagged: english translations, Literature, Mina Witteman, NaNoWriMo, Picture Books, thrillers, writing, YA

Let Your Inner Critic Speak

Mina Witteman

Posted on November 17, 2012

It’s almost done, the course Teaching Creative Writing. We have just a couple more months to go before graduation. Today we had a masterclass from a colleague writer/teacher focussing on the ‘guerilla between the writer and the creative writing teacher’. We started the day with an extraordinary writing exercise. One that kinda freaked us out, like a walk in the Paris catacombs can freak you out. You all know about the inner critic, that nagging voice in the back of your heads that persists in telling you that you suck, major league. Like most of us, I have learned to silence that voice, trick it into believing that I am not interested in its musings. But silenced or not, it is always there, lurking…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Children's books, Thrillers, YA books

Tagged: Creative Writing, Inner Critic, Literature, Mina Witteman, writing

No three-letter-words

Mina Witteman

Posted on November 16, 2012

Daily prompt prompts me to write an entire blog post without using three-letter-words. A true challenge, particularly to a foreigner like me. Could I do that? An entire post without a single three-letter-word? We will discover quickly. When procrastinating my days away on the internet, I came across this wonderful blog post by Shaun Levin. Shaun is an English writer. He is also a writing teacher, always exploring ways to inspire students, ways to inspire himself. When Shaun designs writing courses, he bases them on a premise: through direct experience of a city writers deepen their understanding, their experience of a sense of place, they become more aware of a city’s relevance to whichever prose genre. By writing, eating, walking, floating around a city,…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Children's books, Thrillers, YA books

Tagged: critique group, Indiegogo, Literature, Mina Witteman, natural landscapes, SCBWI, Shaun Levin, Write Around Town, writing, Writing Maps

When protagonists rock your manuscript

Mina Witteman

Posted on October 4, 2012

Sometimes it feels like this writing business is a never ending story. Is there any time that a writer can say goodbye to his manuscript and send it off with a feeling of having pulled off something good? I doubt it. For me, it seems almost impossible. I have been working on this manuscript – ICARUS’ DOOM – for a while now. The first version I rejected myself, the second version was manhandled (in a good way!) by my publisher friend, my agent and my critique partners, and still the third version didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted it. The story was there. It was a good story, a thrilling story, but something was off. I twisted it, I turned it. To…

Categories: A Bit of Everything

Tagged: Icarus, Mina Witteman, POV, Protagonist, Scrivener, Steve Bramucci, writing

Listening while writing

Mina Witteman

Posted on August 1, 2012

Would that work, I wondered, listening while writing? I listen to music when I write. Often. Sometimes to cheer me on, sometimes to land me in another world, sometimes to up the tension. Music without lyrics usually, because lyrics tend to mess up my words. When a colleague creative writing teacher posted a link to THE NEW YORKER Fiction Podcasts I hurried over to the site. Writers heaven, I tell you. Writers heaven! A monthly reading and conversation with The New Yorker’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. Every month an author reads a short story written by another author. They pick the piece themselves, talk it over with Treisman and then they read. I downloaded the available podcasts through iTunes and listened to the first, to the second. And…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, Children's books, Thrillers, YA books

Tagged: Bach, Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, Fiction Podcasts, Icarus, Mina Witteman, Mishima, Philip Glass, Scrivener, The New Yorker, Treisman