Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts from the “YA books” Category

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        

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, YA books

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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:…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, YA books

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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…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, YA books

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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        

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, YA books

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Gone Writing – Day 21

Posted on January 22, 2016

I find myself on the island of Maui. Haven’t seen much of it yet, but going there reminded me of a family back in Amsterdam, who were so smitten by Hawaii they gave their children Hawaiian names: Maui, Lanikai and Ikaika.   Names are important in stories. They reveal a lot about your character. I choose mine with care, knowing that often the name changes as I get to know my character better. Sometimes I choose a name of someone I know because my character resembles that person. Like with the names in my debut Deedee’s Revenge. I needed a name for a courageous protagonist. I picked Deedee, after a distant cousin, at that time a spunky girl just like my Deedee was. Deedee’s brother, her nemesis, has my personal nemesis’s middle…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, YA books

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Gone Writing – Day 20

Posted on January 21, 2016

You don’t have a story until you write it. That’s my adage and a spinoff from my overall writer’s motto: no guts, no glory.   But … writing the story isn’t all. To me the most important part of writing is the revision process and I would like to add a second line to the adage: You don’t have a story until you revise it. Multiple times. A story needs to grow up. It needs to mature and it can only reach maturity if you mold and guide it, if you change and tweak it. I revise my stories multiple times and I think revision is where the true joy of being a writer blossoms. Yes, I also get discouraged every now and again, like when I hit the fifteenth…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, YA books

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Gone Writing – Day 17

Posted on January 18, 2016

The biggest advantage of traveling without Internet is time. Time to read. Time to write. On my way to my next destination I wrote three scenes for the novel, read two books and reread part of another. The first two books were excellent but dark reads. Becoming Chloe by Catherine Ryan Hyde is the heartbreaking story of two teens on the streets. Throwaways, as Ryan Hyde calls them, not runaways because runaways have parents who want them back. Nobody wants Jordy and Chloe back. A dark book but one with a hopeful ending. The other one was The Nest by Kenneth Oppel, one of my favorite writers since his Silverwing trilogy, with gorgeous dark illustrations by Jon Klassen. The Nest is a harrowing story, of the sort that grabs you by the throat and…

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Books, YA books

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