Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts from the “A Bit of Everything” Category

Gone Writing – Day 28

Posted on January 29, 2016

Four weeks on the road and I moved from San Francisco to Hawaii, not just to write but also to research the third book of the Boreas series, and more specifically Wayfinding or Polynesian navigation, finding your way without instruments, like compasses, maps, or GPS but solely on what you see around you, the stars, the rising and setting of moon and sun, the ocean swells and how waves lap against the hull of your ship, the currents, the winds, the direction birds fly.   There’s several ways you can research stories. One is sitting at your laptop and surfing the Internet. You can also go out and meet people, pick their brains, hear their stories, learn about their lives. Obviously, the latter one will most likely…

Gone Writing – Day 27

Posted on January 28, 2016

What else makes me happy?     Reaching my daily word count, even if it’s with a sad scene. My muse crawling back up to me. Finding the perfect wave ring to go with the book.   And this: Tasting the salty spray in my face, while I listen for the quietest sounds within the thunder of 40 ft kahunas crashing down on the beach.  

Gone Writing – Day 26

Posted on January 27, 2016

Did a lot of writing today. Twice the daily target I had set myself. No wonder, I hear you say, after yesterday’s inspirational sunset boat ride. Odd thing is that the inspiration was all related to another project. Not a scrap of new insights or ideas for the novel I’m working on now.   The ideas I gathered yesterday were all for the third book of my Dutch middle grade series Boreas, the twelve-year-old who sails around the world with his parents. The first book, Boreas en de zeven zeeën (Boreas and the Seven Seas), came out last June, the book birth of the second book, Boreas en de duizend eilanden (Boreas and the Thousand Islands) is scheduled for April 13. In the third book – no…

Gone Writing – Day 25

Posted on January 26, 2016

  clouded skies a sluggish brain prose that will not flow force the words out wrest them from your gut squash them into scenes or procrastinate and let the mind roam free on a breezy afternoon sail a boat into the sunset feel the wind brush your skin smell the limu lipoa loaded with dictyopterenes taste the brine that settles on your lips watch the waves roll under hear snippets of adventures from people nearby let kahunas push up high in the channels camp on an island with a zebra and lemur sup from the keys up to maine be rudderless and steer on sails forge new memories find new scenes new words remember think let your writing soar        

Gone Writing – Day 24

Posted on January 25, 2016

So… method writing.   A friend forwarded me a link to the BBC article: “Could ‘method writing’ be the future for novelists?” The article reports of the author Hodgkinson who launched his Method Writers project, for which he invites other authors to try techniques similar to method acting to find out if that works for their writing too. Similar to Lee Strasberg’s method acting, in method writing the author would immerse himself in his character’s life by using his own memories of emotions and sensations to identify with his characters. Is that a novelty? From Strasberg’s website: “Strasberg meant that what is called “Method Acting” is nothing new, but rather as old as Western Civilization itself. For centuries, cultures used different words and phrases to describe “good” acting:…

Gone Writing – Day 23

Posted on January 24, 2016

Poolside writing. Does that work? I thought not. I was wrong. It works. Just like writing in a café back in San Francisco worked. I didn’t know. I always assumed I could only write within the quiet of my office. Until I hit a huge and seemingly indestructible block this summer, dumped in my brain by an absent muse. The result: I couldn’t write. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t live. It left me frustrated like hell and after a few weeks of brooding, I decided I needed a change of venue. I booked a flight to San Francisco, where a good part of the novel would be set, and hoped that if I couldn’t write there, at least I could do some research, walk around, feel the town, find…

Gone Writing – Day 22

Posted on January 23, 2016

my writer soul splits my life my heart and mind clashing like the sea and the land the fine line in between fractal and ever changing i find myself standing strong in the sand crushed by a big kahuna slipping on wet rock caressed by the fizz of foam     the want to stay afloat rips as waves slam me ashore the light wins over the dark the need to find my footing grazes as currents pull me under the dark steals the light i leave my skin behind will the surf to touch my nerves and meld me before i drown