the sternum cracked from the inside alveoli plugged with broken stone sand cement water my brain taut with blood thoughts judgments incoherent rambling pushing to where I can’t go so I stay nameless invisible alone and die
Tagged: #amwriting, Mina Witteman, Revision, San Francisco, Sunshine, YA
an elm tree stands oblivious of the misery in my witless brain its bark rutted with waterfalls of moss and mould that suck up sap buds the color of crimson crowd its branches festering wounds ready to burst a swift breeze whips quicksilver over chocolate water eyes that mock and flee similitudes of the words that mock and flee my pen before I can ink them in a line a boat floats by fingers point sunglasses stare up cameras snap as if they can capture the illusive muse and me in an embrace of body and mind a display of fire that feeds me the final scenes and carries me to the climax of a novel that gutted my soul
Tagged: #amwriting, Amsterdam, canal, Herengracht, Mina Witteman, muse, YA
A friend posted a picture on Facebook of a heron that he said looked like a murderbird plotting a murder. ‘Whoa,’ I commented, ‘I thought I was the murderbird plotting murders. Is that bird gonna write my books now?’ No, seriously. I do slip a lot of dark into my young adult stories and my adult thrillers, including murder, unintentional killing, suicide, and other vicious betrayals of and by mankind. Why? I ask myself that question with every new story and usually end up blaming my muse, even if I know, deep down, that I must have a dark and ruthless streak or his ideas and inspiration wouldn’t strike a chord. For what it’s worth, I never set out to write about death. I do know…
Tagged: #amwriting, Crime, Heron, Murder, Murderbird, Protagonist, Up the stakes, YA
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
One more day and night to go before I travel on to my next destination. These past weeks were intense with days of glorious, sometimes even demonic writing and days of calm and reflective composing. Days of solitude and days when my muse popped in to shake up my thinking. Days when I shamelessly called in my writer friends Jim, Donna and Scott to brainstorm about this wretched project of mine. Days that I plunged so deep into the dark that I was beyond grateful to be enveloped by the loving care of the Adelson family. Good weeks. Productive weeks. Weeks that taught me my writing soars when I’m alone. The book ain’t half done and I have decided that I need to come back here to finish it. It’ll be a few months…
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
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
Mina Witteman 