Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts tagged “Icarus

When protagonists rock your manuscript

Posted on October 4, 2012

Sometimes it feels like this writing business is a never ending story. Is there any time that a writer can say goodbye to his manuscript and send it off with a feeling of having pulled off something good? I doubt it. For me, it seems almost impossible.  I have been working on this manuscript – ICARUS’ DOOM – for a while now. The first version I rejected myself, the second version was manhandled (in a good way!) by my publisher friend, my agent and my critique partners, and still the third version didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted it. The story was there. It was a good story, a thrilling story, but something was off. I twisted it, I turned it. To…

Listening while writing

Posted on August 1, 2012

Would that work, I wondered, listening while writing? I listen to music when I write. Often. Sometimes to cheer me on, sometimes to land me in another world, sometimes to up the tension. Music without lyrics usually, because lyrics tend to mess up my words. When a colleague creative writing teacher posted a link to THE NEW YORKER Fiction Podcasts I hurried over to the site. Writers heaven, I tell you. Writers heaven! A monthly reading and conversation with The New Yorker’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. Every month an author reads a short story written by another author. They pick the piece themselves, talk it over with Treisman and then they read. I downloaded the available podcasts through iTunes and listened to the first, to the second. And…

You’re Not Icarus

Posted on January 3, 2012

Or how to fly through 2012. A long time ago the works of the inimitable Panamarenko — artist, engineer, poet, physicist, inventor and visionary — grabbed me. Panamarenko has dedicated his life to the force of gravity, or rather to beating that force, to flight and speed, to movement and energy, to spaceships, aircrafts and submarines. From the moment I came across his work I was awed by how his amazing mind works, mesmerized by his pencil drawings, lightly colored and with scribbled calculations all over them, and intrigued by his installations. One of his projects drew my special attention, the one where he crosses my love for myth with my love for science: the Icarus Project. We all know about Icarus and about how he…