Last year has been a bit of a self-inflicted overload, work-wise, and after summer I realized that I had no brain space or energy left for what I love doing most: writing. Spurred on by my best friend Sieneke, I mapped out jobs, tasks, responsibilities, assignments, school visits, teaching gigs, mentoring projects and whatnot. On my page – or my three pages – appeared a staggering number of commitments. No wonder my brain refused to engage in new writing projects. It had already way too much to process. I knew that if I wanted to go back to writing I had to whip my stubborn self into change. Luckily, it turns out I can be pretty persuasive with the whip. I shelved all my commitments until further notice, and…
Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing
Posts from the “A Bit of Everything” Category
The other day, EcoSalon, a blog I follow, reposted an article by fellow writer and friend Scott Adelson, titled ‘Making Space for Your Inner Homebody‘ in which Scott makes a case for respecting your Inner Homebody as “the great indoors–and staying home, in particular—gets a bad rap”. In his article, Scott invites the reader “…to stop and look around, and pay some attention to your quarters.” because “…exploring your space can be a limitless source of creative and emotional inspiration…”. My space, my current home, is a café in North Beach, where I’ve taken up temporary residence to write a novel. After five days, no after the first day already, it feels like home, which is good because I’m an indoors kinda gal. There’s not much that I have…
The muse didn’t show up. I realized halfway through the day that he wasn’t going to brighten my day with his pretty self and feed me some solid inspiration. Luckily, the writing still soared from his last visit and when that wore off, I did what writers do: I hunkered down at my laptop and wrote some more. Word after word after word, until I finished the scene I wanted to get on paper. It took some convincing and a lot of tea, but it worked. Like it always works when the muse doesn’t show his face. After I was satisfied with what I had written, I went out – and right at that moment the sun chased the rain – to meet with fellow author Jim Averbeck (Read…
Tagged: A Word from Sophia, Jim Averbeck, San Francisco, Scrivener
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
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
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.…
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
Mina Witteman 