Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts from the “A Bit of Everything” Category

Gone Writing – Day 14

Posted on January 15, 2016

Fog view. Fog brain. One scene written. Protagonist fleeing from the light into the dark. Will she find her way back to the light? No.   I’ve thought long and hard about the novel’s ending and I’ve decided there is only one plausible ending. Bad. Sad. Dark. There will be light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, but she won’t see it. Or maybe she does but too late. Showing the reader how she slides down the slope and away from the light will be the biggest challenge of this project. I will need to make the reader believe that she has not other options left. Then again… how often does the story take me into a different direction? Everything can change with the first, second, third, fourth…

Gone Writing – Day 13

Posted on January 14, 2016

Until today I was so wrapped up in my story that I never realized that there was more than yesterday’s flash fiction kernel that started it, or maybe not started it but at least unconsciously spurred me on to write it. I should’ve known when I started my journey at Schiphol Airport and took out my passport, because I carry my passport with me in a Penguin card holder that depicts the cover of D.H. Lawrence’s The Lost Girl. I should’ve known when I pulled out my travel pouch and notebook to scribble down my thoughts during the 11-hour flight to San Francisco, because I carry my pens, sharpies, pencils, my good luck trinkets with me in a Penguin travel pouch that is printed with the cover of Jack Kerouac’s On…

Gone Writing – Day 12

Posted on January 13, 2016

Besides writing longer novels, I write short stories. For the young but also for adults. My adult short stories are flash fiction pieces, often no more than a few lines or 250 words at the most. I love writing flash fiction. It forces me to be concise, sharp, snappy. It forces me to be harsh and merciless. Not necessarily topic- or story-wise, although my flash fiction often turns out a tad gruesome, but harsh and merciless when it comes to trimming the word count. I mostly write the flash fiction in English and there’s no fluffing up with a limited vocabulary. It pushes me to not skirt the core of the story but to go straight for the kill.   Sometimes a flash fiction story germinates and grows into a novel, like…

Gone Writing – Day 11

Posted on January 12, 2016

were you to go beyond the boundaries of your own mind there would be no ties no cords to pull you down there would be no chains to rope in your wishes the numbing beauty of booze-induced amnesia would be uncalled for an excess a waste cross limits in audacious trust unchain the liberating force of your own mind to open new doors let transformational neurophysics happen reshape your molecules into a whirl of dust for your new breath to blow and scatter

Gone Writing – Day 10

Posted on January 11, 2016

After days of solid writing and going deep, I needed a break. From writing. From the story. From solitude. So I decided to hop on the ferry and meet with my friend Donna Weidner across the Bay in Tiburon. Donna, also a writer, and I had a long and thought-provoking talk about life and about writing and what it does to you if the story is close to home and chafes your soul. Like this one, which is my story and at the same time not my story.   One of the things I had to decide was between a happy, or at least a hopeful, ending and a sad ending. I knew already it had to be the latter. It is a sad story and like real-life sad stories sometimes there…

Gone Writing – Day 9

Posted on January 10, 2016

I went out to look for lonely places for a lonely protagonist. I did that on a day that I felt pretty lonely myself, being in a foreign city with even my muse going AWOL on me. Loneliness is often perceived as a negative emotion but I think it can be a great creative boost too. You just have to find the break in the clouds. In this case my loneliness made sure I would pick up on all the right vibes.   Evelyn, who works at the café where I’m writing this book, had pointed me towards The Wave Organ, a curious installation at the end of a jetty in the Marina district. The installation consists of 25 organ pipes made of PVC and concrete. The pipes are located at various elevations, allowing for the…

Gone Writing – Day 8

Posted on January 9, 2016

Shakespeare wormed his way into my manuscript. I already had a connection with the Bard and chances that he would knock on my novel’s door were big, if only because one of my main sparring partners for this project is the playwright George Isherwood, who wrote Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits back in the 70s, and recently the one-man version of Othello and the hilarious one-man-and-a-rope version of King Lear, which I saw in tryout before I left for San Francisco.   The knock came and there he was. The Bard. With Hamlet in his hand, no less. Or rather, Ophelia. Of course we all know about Ophelia’s fate. Not pretty. Not pretty at all and when she slipped into the novel, my initial thought was: couldn’t you’ve dealt me a more uplifting…