Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts from the “Amsterdam Views” Category

Daily Prompt: Landscape

Posted on May 9, 2013

Today’s Daily Prompt is about Landscapes: When you gaze out your window — real or figurative — do you see the forest first, or the trees? Let’s hit the real part first. When I gaze out of my window I see a cityscape. Not your regular cityscape with skyscrapers and all, but the gentle Amsterdam skyline that seems pretty much the same as it was centuries ago. The trees grew taller, the people inside changed, but the rooftops are still silhouetted against blue skies and scurrying clouds as they were in the 17th century. No forest at Herengracht, just trees. Elms. On this spring day, their delicate bud green flowers catch the sunlight in the most amazing way. Diaphanous petals that seem to emit…

Amsterdam – A City in Spring

Posted on April 14, 2013

At last! We enjoyed the very first spring day of 2013. Sitting in the window, it made me think of that camp song so inextricably bound to our fair city: Tulips from Amsterdam. We usually sing the Dutch version ‘Tulpen uit Amsterdam’ and typically only when we’re drunk with joy or otherwise intoxicated — temperatures above 20ºC or over two hours of sunshine a day can do that to us. More than a few believe the song to be an old folk song, but it was originally written by German singer/songwriter Klaus-Günther Neumann. The English version became one of the signature songs of British comedian and singer Max Bygraves. The sun and the warmth drew me outside and strolling along the beautiful beautiful green canals…

Turn Left At the Canal

Posted on May 25, 2011

Last Friday I took my muse to the theatre, something I do way too little, but then my muse spends a great deal of his time abroad (or so goes my rather lame excuse). The title of the play, “Bij het kanaal naar links” — “Turn Left At the Canal”– was appealing enough: I used to live close to a canal and my mom was relentless in trying to keep me away from that mysterious child-beckoning waterway. Bad, bad people roamed the banks, she said, no place for children. Needless to say her warnings lured me to that baleful place like a firewall lures a hacker to a website. The writer of the play is Alex van Warmerdam. He is a prize-winning Dutch playwright, poet, actor and…

Welcome to Amsterdam

Posted on March 16, 2011

It was a warm and sunny day. A spring day, if you wish. Not the type that you immediately start rummaging through your closet for shorts and skirts, but a pleasant 15 degrees. Just enough to open your window, lean out and catch a ray or two, while watching tourists saunter by. Tourists? Yep. And with them hunting season has opened. One major player in the hunting game is the city’s parking management. When the sun shows and the tourists start pouring in, they hop in their nifty white vans. Like true bounty-hunters they roam the streets and canals, routing meter infringers, time offenders and the general parking knave. Today they made their first catch. A sweet little Opel left by its inconsiderate owner…

Amsterdam view: writing a good read

Posted on October 26, 2010

These days I am writing an average of 3,500 words a day revising my thriller DARK FIBER. It’s hard work, leaving me no time for a social life whatsoever. Luckily that isn’t a problem at all, because my protagonist Jonathan Kelder doesn’t have a social life either, and part of my method of writing is that I like to experience what my protagonists’ go through. If they go out rafting, I go out rafting. If they hike cold and misty mountains in Canada, I hike the same cold and misty mountains. I love doing what my protagonists do. And I think it works. One of the compliments I get from readers is that reading my books make them feel like they are actually joining…

Amsterdam view: a writer’s autumn

Posted on October 20, 2010

Today’s a writing day. I can feel it in my bones, I can see it outside. It is the most perfect weather for a writer, here in Amsterdam. Like yesterday – when I did 5,000 words on the revision of my techno thriller Turing’s Deceit, a.k.a. Dark Fiber – autumn races past my window, pushing on every writing fiber in my body. A stiff northern wind brings me sunshine and bright skies one minute, hail and thunderstorms the next. It is as if the Northern gods urge me to write faster and faster, as if they want me and my protagonist to hurry up, and get us to Ragnarök to fight that mythical war against the great serpent. I am wondering whether my protagonist…