Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts tagged “method writing

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…