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
Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing
Posts tagged “writing”
After days of solid writing and going deep, I needed a break. From writing. From the story. From solitude. So I decided to hop on the ferry and meet with my friend Donna Weidner across the Bay in Tiburon. Donna, also a writer, and I had a long and thought-provoking talk about life and about writing and what it does to you if the story is close to home and chafes your soul. Like this one, which is my story and at the same time not my story. One of the things I had to decide was between a happy, or at least a hopeful, ending and a sad ending. I knew already it had to be the latter. It is a sad story and like real-life sad stories sometimes there…
Tagged: Donna Weidner, open ending, Protagonist, writing, YA
Tea with my dear friend and colleague writer Sieneke de Rooij never fails to end in a marvel of imaginative discoveries. This time, we met a the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam, a find an sich. Way back in 1921, the Lloyd started out as a hotel, but in the years after it also served as prison and a juvenile detention center before returning to her old use a few years back. Imagine staying in a room that once was the cell of a thief or a murderer… Every writer’s dream.
We sat outside until the sun chased us in. We climbed up to the second floor to the exhibition of the Street Comber. For over a year, the Street Comber made one collage per day out of small junk she found on the streets. The collages on display were gems of intricate genius. With every collage, a card listed when and where the Street Comber found what bits and pieces.
We circled through the exhibition over and over, every time discovering more stories in these tiny but wondrous finds. We left invigorated and with a heads full of new ideas.
Tagged: Amsterdam, Inspiration, Lloyd Hotel, Sieneke de Rooij, Straatjutter, Street Comber, writing
Endless toying with ideas until one catches, that is what starts my writing process. I collect intel on the subject, ranging from scribbled notes to images to websites to researching locations and places. During that period the plot unfolds. When I’m sure where it’s going, how the story will be shaped, I start writing.
I write the first draft in one go. No looking back, no revising of the first pages until they shine and sparkle, no such thing. Main reason? I usually end up chucking the first two or three chapters of a novel, so what’s the use. I know there is a lot of ‘First Pages’ going on at writing conferences and professional critiques, but I strongly believe that you can only send in your first pages when you have written the end of your story, even if it turns out a provisional end.
The first draft gets shelved for at least a week or two, before I go back and do a rewrite. I never root around in a draft. I rewrite the whole thing, from beginning to end. That is the only way I can let the story flow, both in my mind and on paper.
The revised draft (which could be the second, third, fourth or fifth draft) goes to my beloved critique partners of the Burnishing Club. Usually two of them get their red Sharpies out. When they return my manuscript, I breathe in deeply, remind myself that they love me, and face the cold wind of being questioned. Don’t’ worry, I love wind, the stronger the better! They never fail me, my crit buddies, and I love them for that.
The final draft is again a thorough rewrite and usually involves the chucking of the first chapters. More often than not they turn out to be backstory. Sometimes, the final draft goes to my crit buddies who haven’t seen it yet, particularly if I’m not sure about it or if I realize that I didn’t kill as much darlings as I should have. Or just because I think the manuscript can do with a pair of fresh eyes. If I’m happy, I put the manuscript aside until I’m ready for a line-edit, where I root out everything ugly and unnecessary like passive sentences, thought verbs, stage directions and what not, where I will tweak and polish until it shines and sparkles like it should.
Then and only then, I will send it out into the world, knowing as an editor, that I will not have shed the last tear or spilled the last drop of sweat. For there will always be agents and editors, who, with a keen eye for detail, find fault in my stars.
That’s it, a peek into my writing process. I hope you enjoyed it. Next on the Writing Process Blog Tour are Donna Weidner and Gary Fabbri. Amazing writers! Do visit their blogs and read about their writing process!
Daily Distraction: How Does My Work Differ From Others in My Genre?
Mina Witteman
Posted on May 28, 2014
That is a tough question, as I don’t write in one specific genre. I love writing longer work like middle grade or young adult novels and series, but I also have about 40 short stories for the very young out in the Netherlands and a Little Golden Book – Mia’s Nest – coming up, this fall. A red thread through my work, though, is adventure and if the story asks for it frightening adventure.
Another red thread is that I do open ends. When I was young, I simply hated the end of a book. Often, I would leave the last few pages unread and loved it when my mind would wander along the sheer endless possibilities of where the characters could go if the author hadn’t pinned them down. That’s the freedom I’d like to give my readers, too.
With the two previous posts and the next one, this blog post is part of the Writing Process Blog Tour.
My most recent project was a YA thriller, a scary story set in marijuana-ridden Amsterdam. I’ve worked on the manuscript with the ultimate Master of YA lit Ellen Hopkins through the SCBWI Nevada Mentor Program. Ellen’s critiques and suggestions made a world of difference and I am very thankful I had the opportunity to work with her. These past few weeks I have done a thorough –and ‘thorough’ stands for ‘an extremely painful, soul-searching, kill-your-darlings kinda’– line edit of the manuscript and sent it out. So now I’m working on my nails, BITING MY NAILS, that is.
Since biting nails, like all girly stuff, is not my favorite pastime, I write to keep my mind away from this agonizing waiting game. Four projects are on my desk, all in neat stacks, because I am what I am, a former architect school dropout and a diehard math girl. Here goes:
- A middle grade adventure series for my Dutch publisher Ploegsma about a young boy who is forced – yes, can you believe that? The nerve! – to sail around the world with his parents.
- The English rewrite of an adult psychological thriller with a very creepy techno twist. The thriller set in the heart of the Internet where techies rule our worlds.
- A brand new and exciting but very edgy young adult thriller. Can’t tell you much about it yet, except that it will be scare as hell.
- As always, I have a few picture book manuscripts lined up, too.
Tagged: Ellen Hopkins, Ploegsma, SCBWI Nevada, writing
Welcome to this stop on the Writing Process Blog Tour. The amazing Tioka Tokedira nominated me for the next round on this blog tour that leads you past writers of all plumes. Tioka is the writer of The Stone Cutter, a spine-chilling YA about a girl raised to be a thief and a mysterious boy in a Maserati – so spine-chilling it landed her right into the Undiscovered Voices Anthology 2014. After I’ve answered the four questions, I will nominate the next writers who will do the same, as many have done before us. Curious about who preceded me? Search the net for Writing Process Blog Tour! Or click here.
I’m changing the Blog Tour routine a little, as I like my blog posts to be short and snappy, so I divided the four questions into four daily distraction posts and a closing post with the nomination of the next writer(s). Check in tomorrow for the first question:
- What am I working on?
- How does my work differ from others in my genre?
- Why do I write what I do?
- How does my writing process work?
For the next round, starting next Monday, I nominate the incredibly funny Gary Fabbri, writer, illustrator and film director. Born and raised in Rhode Island, he lived in London for 12 years working in television and advertising before moving to Stockholm. His picture book THE EAGLE WHO WANTED TO SEE EVERYTHING just came out.
My second nomination goes to writer, Reiki Master, Wisdom Keeper and all around adventuress Donna Gwinnel Lambo-Weidner. Despite her love for anything that deals with archery, armor, and swashbuckling, and her appreciation for a good sword, Donna is one of the kindest people on earth. She writers picture books and middle grades, and somehow there’s a lot of chickens in them, like a distraught hen whose egg yolks have been deemed too yellow, and a middle grade novel about a chicken who accompanies Marco Polo on his expedition to China.
Mina Witteman 