Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts tagged “muse

Gone Writing – Day 41

Posted on February 11, 2016

Walking down the marina in San Diego my eye caught the name of a boat. The muse. I found my muse! Granted, he manifested a tad different than I had imagined but I took his/her/its picture, just to be sure. Then hopped on a plane to my next destination, New York, where I will attend the Winter Conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.   To pass time on the flight I decided not to write but to read. A friend had recommended I read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, a book that I had missed when it first came out – at that time my mind wasn’t into anything jesty with a two-year-old who had a tendency to stop…

Gone Writing – Day 32

Posted on February 2, 2016

i have nothing left to give said the muse disconcerting news that forces my writer’s imagination to find release in solitary thinking in fantasies dreams words that propel me into ian’s blue hawaiian spiral wings send me soaring over red hot molten rock that burns the trees winding through lush green valleys forests that climb up steep cliffs where ropes of sugar sweet white fizz cascade down until my brain whirls like an airfoil pours out novel words new lines to paint a story like the goddess of fire gushes passion from her pit and coats the earth’s crust in black and silver mahalo pele  

Gone Writing – Day 27

Posted on January 28, 2016

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.  

Gone Writing – Day 11

Posted on January 12, 2016

were you to go beyond the boundaries of your own mind there would be no ties no cords to pull you down there would be no chains to rope in your wishes the numbing beauty of booze-induced amnesia would be uncalled for an excess a waste cross limits in audacious trust unchain the liberating force of your own mind to open new doors let transformational neurophysics happen reshape your molecules into a whirl of dust for your new breath to blow and scatter

Gone Writing – Day 8

Posted on January 9, 2016

Shakespeare wormed his way into my manuscript. I already had a connection with the Bard and chances that he would knock on my novel’s door were big, if only because one of my main sparring partners for this project is the playwright George Isherwood, who wrote Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits back in the 70s, and recently the one-man version of Othello and the hilarious one-man-and-a-rope version of King Lear, which I saw in tryout before I left for San Francisco.   The knock came and there he was. The Bard. With Hamlet in his hand, no less. Or rather, Ophelia. Of course we all know about Ophelia’s fate. Not pretty. Not pretty at all and when she slipped into the novel, my initial thought was: couldn’t you’ve dealt me a more uplifting…