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.
Tagged: #amwriting, jaws, kahuna, Maui, muse
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:…
Tagged: #amwriting, bbc, boreas, Haleakala, Maui, memories, method acting, method writing, YA
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…
Tagged: #amwriting, hawaii, lono tiki, Maui, method writing, tiki
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
Tagged: #amwriting, kahuna, Maui, ocean, Poem, shore, writing life
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…
Mina Witteman 