TWIC: Catching up and Merry Christmas!

I've been giving exams and marking them and organizing grades to fit the bell curve I am expected to maintain and haven't spent much time working on Creativiti Project. and now, I have quite a backlog of links. Here ya go!

200+ Story prompts. These prompts, at a quick glance, didn't do anything for me, but I do like finding a prompt to start from.Ah, I just had another look and I take it back. These two, found quickly, have caught my attention:

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K. Wieland has a best of post and this one about story structure.From the latter is an interesting info-graphic which I have trimmed and snipped - see the full version at the link:

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Art and science at Nature Ecology and Evolution. Trimmed image - follow the link ...

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Depression reduces creativity.

Researchers found that artists' work created during a period of misery was up to 35 percent less valuable than other pieces pic.twitter.com/dNHetiS33b

— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) December 20, 2017

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Websites for a 13 year old writing enthusiast.
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What all ( maybe some?) writers fear. For full comic, follow the link:

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I notice that my links have little to do with Christmas. Well, I still wish you a merry one and all that. Happy Festivus!
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Wait, one Christmasy Tweet!

This sounds eerily familiar...
:-) pic.twitter.com/Ih252LtUQt

— J Courtenay Grimwood (@JonCG) December 22, 2017

TWIC: PErfect, focus, inspiration, sharing, erotica

Grant Snider discusses perfection. I'm a fan of his posters and have bought some for my sister. I want this one, if anyone is interested in helping me with that desire. Actually, I don't want the image below that I deliberately scrunched - follow the link to see the full image:

Boy. I really like the poster but the crumpled version I made to show looks very negative. Really, it is a cheery poster in full.
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Focus when writing - and probably any other creative pursuit:

"While writing, shut down email and internet access. All of it! ... We need to practice and strengthen our long-deep writing muscles for most effective — and satisfying — story sinking."
Winnipeg author and actor Anita Daher

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The book that inspired Dune!

Anyone who has obsessed over the mythology of Dune will immediately recognize the language Herbert borrowed from Blanch’s work. Chakobsa, a Caucasian hunting language, becomes the language of a galactic diaspora in Herbert’s universe. Kanly, from a word for blood feud among the Islamic tribes of the Caucasus, signifies a vendetta between Dune’s great spacefaring dynasties. Kindjal, the personal weapon of the region’s Islamic warriors, becomes a knife favored by Herbert’s techno-aristocrats. As Blanch writes, “No Caucasian man was properly dressed without his kindjal.”

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On Quora, 100+ people share some of their creative work
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Selling a book bundle on Amazon. TL;DR: combine the 2 or 3 or # of books into one file, make a new cover and upload it to Amazon.
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Describe a cup of water. The lesson Robert Jordan gave Brandon Sanderson.
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Should I write more sexy scenes? Part of a newsletter I get From Skinny Artist:

So she was wondering if she should start writing romance novels instead.
Not just romance novels, but “erotica” novels, which I’m told are kind of like the foul-mouthed step-cousin of the romance genre.
When I asked her why she was thinking about changing to this particular niche, she told me that it was because these novels are typically short and sell extremely well. There’s apparently a huge demand for these type of books, and ebook readers are known to buy them one right after another.
But here’s the thing. Tracy has never read an “erotica” book in her life, and she doesn’t particularly look forward to writing one, but she said that she’s tired of putting all of this time and energy into writing her thriller novels year after year only to watch them gather dust on the virtual shelf.
I mentioned to her that although I'm sure there are a lot of erotica authors out there who are selling a ton of books, she was probably going to make herself miserable if she didn’t have a passion (ahem) for the subject matter.

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TWIC: ideas, self-publishing, toronto library, crowded sky, 78s,

Where do you (or does N.K. Jemison) get your (her) ideas?
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Make a living as a self-published author. (10 tips)

I wake up at or around 5:00 AM every morning, without an alarm. Why would I need one? Even before my feet hit the floor, I’m excited to get started. I love what I do. My neighbors must wonder, Why is that man with the giant nose ALWAYS smiling?

This perfectly describes how I want to feel -and also my nose. When I am busy, I wake up already knowing what I will do that day. This feeling is both thrilling and exhausting. I think I need to find a balance between the two feelings. Usually, I feel neither thrilled nor all that tired.
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Toronto's science fiction library has a new head librarian (Check out the URL; I wonder what titles they were first thinking of to come up with that). I think it's cool that Toronto has a science fiction library even beyond that the head it changing. another reason to go home.
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I have in mind to try -some day- writing a story set in a 'crowded sky' as described on this blog. The blog post uses gas giants in the Goldilocks zone of a star to cram in many Earth-sized moons. They also place pairs of Earth-sized planets at the LaGrange points to eventually fit in 36 or more habitable planets. New Scientist offers a summary. Now, Scientific American offers news on how common - or in fact, not - moons are as observed around distant stars. This set of links in this post are mostly for my own reference, I guess.
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Another link not directly related to this blog's intended content: I often offer links to archives of public domain material and I am not sure if this qualifies but if it doesn't, I think it will soon. Archive dot org has 25,000 songs digitized from old 78 records. Kottke has a summary of what this means.
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TWIC: at camp, Microsoft Word, grit, balance, planning

I start my This Week In Creativity roundups the day after the previous one is posted. So I am writing this on Tuesday the eighteenth. Between now and the time this is posted I will start work at an ESL and science camp. I really can't say if this will be a shorter post than usual or not.

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Encouraging grit and imagination in the classroom. This sounds like the perfect post for me. Actually the Sci-Am link starting this paragraph only describes the videos and idea.  The videos are at Imagination Institute and look to be a version of TED talks.
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Using Microsoft Word to write a book? Among book snobs, the idea is nearly revolutionary. The industry standard is probably Scrivener or the like. But Tallulah Lucy defends Word.

My trilogy is currently sitting at 316,078 words, which amounts to 732 Microsoft Word pages. It’s all in a single doc.
I’m not saying that to impress anyone (it still needs to be edited down!). Only because a few people I’ve chatted to seem to think that you need some fancy writing software to write anything of that length. I actually find Word really easy to use, and it’s all because a few years ago I figured out how to structure a document for a novel.
Here’s what I do, and hopefully it can help you too.
1. Navigation Pane
Under “View” on the main menu, check “Navigation Pane”. This is the key to the entire thing. The Navigation Pane allows you to view the document by headings, pages or by search results. The headings is the important thing, as you will be able to navigate directly to each heading by clicking on it.
2. Scrap yard and Marker
The first thing I type is Scrap Yard, the second is Marker. Both of these should be on their own lines and set to Heading 1. You will find Heading 1 under Styles on the Home tab of the main menu. Then they show up in the Navigation Pane. You want to start typing your novel above this.
3. Using headings to structure the novel
Something that I know I vastly underestimated when I started writing was how much time I’d spend skipping back to check stuff. Whether it’s a character name, a piece of dialogue or what the hell happened in That One Scene, I do it at least three times in every writing session.
Now for each section of a story that I write, I will use headings so that I can easily find that part again.

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I offer links to various archives and collections of public domain art and such in these posts. As they are public domain, one can snip and mix and match to make new art. For someone with my shaky hands, this is a better option than drawing new stuff. Anyway, the following archive is not public domain, I think, but is another example of barely restrained creativity; 25 or more years of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine are in Archive dot org.
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Balancing work and life, and hustle

Good Hustle:
-Constantly striving to improve
-Professional, courteous, positive
-Pursuing what you love
-Should be praised

— Sam Sykes (@SamSykesSwears) July 17, 2017

Bad Hustle:
-Missing sleep to work more
-Compromising health for sake of craft
-Missing out on relationships
-Should not be praised

— Sam Sykes (@SamSykesSwears) July 17, 2017

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And Sergio Pereira on a writing and life balance:

That said, there are moments when I need to breathe. This week, for example, I had one of those flustered, overwhelming feelings. You know, that feeling where you ask yourself what you are doing with your life. It bums you out and you start to think negatively about stuff, which makes matters even worse.
...
Mental health isn’t a joke. If you’re feeling down, it’s your brain telling you that something is wrong and you need to fix it. Burning out won’t impress anyone and does more damage than good in the long run. Learn to listen to the signs that your mind and body emit and respect that balance is needed. Trust me, sometimes delaying that piece of writing by a week or a month will be worth more than completing it right now.

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Should you plan your story ahead or not? Every attempt I have made to writing a book has stumbled to a halt roughly 80~90% in with no clear idea of how to wrap it up. This is true for stories that I had excellent plans for (plans until the end, of course) and for stories I made up from the start with no pre-planning.

The question of whether or not to plan, and how much planning to do, is a particularly weighty one when it comes to novel writing. Because novels are heavily reliant on structure, and because they are such a massive undertaking by any measure, outlining might seem both practical and necessary—a way to make the abyss of the blank page feel a little bit less … well, abyss-like.
But is outlining actually necessary? Of course not.
When it comes to writing a novel, the only thing that is necessary is actually, you know, writing it. How you get there is entirely up to you. But should you outline?
Though advice often comes in the form of absolutes (you must write every day; you must show, not tell; you must kill your darlings), I’m wary of them under any circumstances, and I think they’re especially useless when it comes to process. While not knowing how to proceed is a very common problem, the particular psychological hurdles of starting (let alone finishing) a project are individual. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

The tiny bit of wood carvin experience I have informs me that a fairly solid plan is necessary before starting. I can't just whittle your way into an interesting carving. I need a few pictures and diagrams and measurements before blade touches wood.
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John Grisham offers writing advice.
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Quantity eventually create quality.

TWIC: Worst muse, plot sex, magic, process, notebooks, brainstorming, distraction, cleese, school

The Worst Muse Twitter account isn't active these days, but there is lots of (terrible) advice there.

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Writing plot sex

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Help transcribe texts on magic for the Chicago Library. C'mon, what could go wrong?

“You don't need a Ph.D to transcribe,” Christopher Fletcher, coordinator of the project and a fellow of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, tells Smithsonian.com. “[The initiative] is a great way to allow the general public to engage with these materials in a way that they probably wouldn't have otherwise.”


The three manuscripts now available online reflect the varied and complex ways that magic fit into the broader religious landscape of a shifting and modernizing West. The 17th-century Book of Magical Charms contains instructions on a range of magical practices—“from speaking with spirits to cheating at dice,” according to the Transcribing Faith website—but also includes Latin prayers and litanies that align with mainstream religious practices. An untitled document known as the “commonplace book” explores strange and fantastical occurrences, along with religious and moral questions. Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits by Increase Mather, a Puritan minister and president of Harvard who presided over the Salem Witch Trials, expresses a righteous condemnation of witchcraft.

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The Real Creative Process Here are the five steps offered at the link. I snipped most of the explanations so if you want more, follow the link:

1 Preparation
Preparation involves forming a question about our project and immersing ourselves in the search for answers. We decide we want to create something and set out to learn how. It doesn’t just involve pre-work for the project itself; it encompasses everything we’ve ever done or felt.
2 Incubation
Our subconscious processes what we learned in the first stage and assembles it more easily and cleverly than our conscious mind ever could.
3 Illumination
This is the part everyone thinks happens automatically, and pretty much never does. Occasionally, after some Incubation (which could be weeks, months, or the amount of time it takes to have a shower), our muse will deliver a nice little package for us.
4 Verification
More often, though, verification is the part where we discover our ideas still need work. If we’re not careful to be very gentle with ourselves at this stage, it can feel like the creative equivalent of waking up hungover next to the person we brought home from the bar, who, in the cold morning, looks more like a melted candle than the thing we took to bed.
5 Elaboration
Elaboration is where we renew our commitment and run through steps 1-4 again and again until we end up with something we can love.
Although I’ve written the process as if it always goes in order, Csikszentmihalyi reminds us “that the five stages, in reality, are not exclusive but typically overlap and recur several times before the process is completed.

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More on Feynman and notebooks.
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A list of rules for brainstorming. These three stand out for me (follow the link for the rest and a video):

3. Build on the ideas of others
4. Stay focused on the topic
5. One conversation at a time

I think these specific rules work for a group brainstorming session but seem to step on the general rule against editing. Perhaps the video explains things.
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Being busy is killing our ability to think creatively. There is a quote within a quote below - the nested quote is in italics

Little good comes from being distracted yet we seem incapable of focusing our attention. Among many qualities that suffer, recent research shows creativity takes a hit when you’re constantly busy. Being able to switch between focus and daydreaming is an important skill that’s reduced by insufferable business.8 As Stanford’s Emma Seppälä writes:

The idea is to balance linear thinking—which requires intense focus—with creative thinking, which is borne out of idleness. Switching between the two modes seems to be the optimal way to do good, inventive work.

This reminds me of John Cleese saying that he needed 15 minutes to get into a project and any distraction, even a short one, required the same 15 minutes warm up.
Hmmm. I can't find that quote but naturally there is a lot of interesting Cleese has said. Here are a few places to look. One. Two. Three.
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I remember forty years ago we were about to put up panelling or wallpaper in a room and the evening before, dad brought out pencils and, well, stuff - it was forty years ago, the details are hazy - and we decorated the walls with our art before they were covered over and hidden.
The same thing was done on a larger scale at a school about to undergo renovations.

Their Facebook page with many images of the art.

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TWIC: Journaling, self-publishing, fantastic travel, online long reads, Garfield, writing advice, contest, sewing

The science behind productivity and bullet journaling. 

First it's important to understand a huge body of scientific research shows that old fashioned journaling -- nothing fancier than dumping your thoughts onto the page -- can be hugely positive for mental health This suggests that basically any way you find to get your thoughts down on paper is probably going to help you calm your mind and get stuff done, though no specific studies have yet been done on bullet journaling (so this is al just informed speculation).
That being said, this more graphical form of journaling might provide unique benefits, several experts believe. Neuroscientist and author Daniel Levitin, for instance, suggests that one of the system's advantages is that it works like an external memory extension.
"The conscious mind can attend to about three things at once. Try to juggle any more than that and you're going to lose some brain power," he tells Davis. A bullet journal might be helping its fans get past that inherent mental limitation.
It might also help shut down a psychological phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik Effect, which states that it's easier to remember uncompleted tasks than completed ones. When an undone task keeps intruding into your thoughts, simply planning out when you'll complete it can help clear it out of your mind, research shows. That's why you often write a to-do list, feel better, and then simply lose it. It's also why bullet journals may be so soothing for some, according to psychologist EJ Masicampo.

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And from Quora, where I am spending way too much time: Is journaling a creative necessity?
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An editor's opinion on self-publishing

The Problem
The self-publishing industry includes very few quality barriers, an unfortunate shortcoming that leads to infamous works like E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. And, because self-published authors are obliged to format, promote, and design both the covers and images for their own works, publishing becomes so cost-intensive that many quality authors simply can’t afford it. “Those authors work in a vacuum,” Logan says, “with very little outside support.”
In short, the self-published market has become so flooded with mediocre texts that most people have come to view all self-published texts as inferior.

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Travelogues, real vs fantastic.

If there’s one thing that reading these books so closely together drove home, it’s how fantastical travelogues emphasize the pleasures and wonders and marvels of the journey, while actual, real travelogues emphasize how annoying and awful travel can be. Real travelogues will include at least some ranting, while fantastical ones often emphasize the amazing and wonderful nature of the places visited.
This pattern may not be universal, but it does seem to hold when I think over things I’ve read in the past—from travel writings by Mary Wollstonecraft and Isabella Bird Bishop to fantastical stories of travel by authors like Jonathan Swift and Marco Polo’s Travels (significant portions of which it’s believed are retellings of others’ stories). There are exceptions, of course, like Peter Mayne’s jolly and amusing A Year in Marrakesh (discussed here), but I think the pattern overall holds… probably for good reason. Visiting a foreign place involves the actual discomfort and dislocation of travel; fantasy, the spectacle and splendor without the trouble.

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Design and reader follow through in online long reads. A long twitter thread on the attempts of website owners to promote their content at the expense of driving people away from reading their content.

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How Jim Davis got his start (I do not see a way to link to the specific comic. Look for July 6, 2017) (This image has been cropped greatly and shrunk slightly. To see more follow the link and search).

The What Should We Draw podcast looks fun, too.
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A list of 38 books to help you write. The first four:

• On Writing by Stephen King (2012) – This is a definite favourite between writers as King gives a low-down on how the basics of writing actually work. I’m not a huge fan of the tone he uses in this one but I can’t deny this is gives any writer understanding of the basic skill set
• Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne LaMott (1980) – This was another firm favourite and timeless classic, although I’ve never read it, a lot of the authors talking about this said how much it had helped them and opened their eyes.
• Writing the Breakout Novel by Dondald Maass (2002)- Claimed to be brilliant, this book has made it pretty far up my list as Maass gives an all round guide for published and unpublished authors alike. 

• Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (2005) – This combines Zen meditation with the form of writing as been nominated by several of our authors who also went on to nominate another of her books that we’ll come to later on.

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Murakami's advice for young writers

Remember that scene in Steven Spielberg’s film E.T. where E.T. assembles a transmitting device from the junk he pulls out of his garage? There’s an umbrella, a floor lamp, pots and pans, a record player─it’s been a long time since I saw the movie, so I can’t recall everything, but he manages to throw all those household items together in such a way that the contraption works well enough to communicate with his home planet thousands of light years away. I got a big kick out of that scene when I saw it in a movie theater, but it strikes me now that putting together a good novel is much the same thing. The key component is not the quality of the materials─what’s needed is magic. If that magic is present, the most basic daily matters and the plainest language can be turned into a device of surprising sophistication.
First and foremost, though, is what’s packed away in your garage. Magic can’t work if your garage is empty. You’ve got to stash away a lot of junk to use if and when E.T. comes calling!

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A new risk to air travel, time travel to 2037.

XPrize and ANA present a series of short stories "of the passengers from Flight 008, imagined by the world’s top science fiction storytellers, as they discover a future transformed by exponential technologies."

The book has stories from many top writers, but there is also a contest!

XPrize and ANA present a series of short stories "of the passengers from Flight 008, imagined by the world’s top science fiction storytellers, as they discover a future transformed by exponential technologies."

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Tyler Cowan's writing routine.

What’s your process for editing your own work?

I repeatedly edit it many times, at least ten. I just keep on doing it, until I can’t think of further improvements. I can’t say that is a process in any formal sense, simply a recognition that the “process” to date hasn’t worked very well and so it must continue. I don’t pretend this is efficient.
How do you finish out a day of writing? Do you have a process, or is it just that you know you’ve hit a natural stopping point?
I try to finish out early, so my mind is clear for reading, meetings, other kinds of decisions, whatever I need to do. I can’t write for anything close to a full day, it involves too much concentration.
How much of a day for you is spent in research versus writing, or are you doing both at the same time?
Both at the same time, but it depends what stage the project is at. In the earliest stages, the proportion of research is much higher. After a while, it simply ends up being a process of editing out mistakes and infelicities. Then I will go and restudy or reread the key materials I used.

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This plot needs work! Here is the work that needs to be done.

I realised, about 37,000 words in, that I was quickly loosing track of my characters and their goals were getting fuzzy. I didn’t know where the novel was going.

I wasn’t prepared to throw out the whole thing and start again, because I think I have some good work in there and I’m not prepared to give up those words. Not yet.

What did I do? I read.
Step One
I started with a revision of the Heroes Journey, the 12-step structure of mythical stories that just about every novel I can name adheres to. The official definition, from the link above, is:

The Hero’s Journey is a pattern of narrative identified by the American scholar Joseph Campbell that appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development. It describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as The Hero, the person who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the group, tribe, or civilization.
I got out some colorful pencils and sketched it out for myself: [image removed - follow link to see it, and a whole lot more, including four more steps.]

80,000+ sewing patterns online. I don't sew but this might also be interesting to see how fashion and style has changed.

McCall's, Butterick, Simplicity. If you were into sewing, or simply spent time as a child rummaging through patterns with your mother at the fabric store, these names will bring on a wave of nostalgia. And now, thanks to a fantastic online collection of vintage sewing patterns, it's time to dust off your sewing machine.
The Vintage Patterns Wiki boasts more than 83,500 patterns that are at least 25 years old, which makes for a fascinating look back at fashion history. As a collaborative effort, the database is constantly being updated and organized, with any newly uploaded patterns dating prior to 1992. Just click on the cover and browse the list of pattern vendors who have the look.

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From Quora: How do I write a long blog article? As others noted, writing new material of whatever length is appropriate seems a better goal than 'long'.

TWIC: anatomy, money, schedules, self-loathing, secrets, note taking

Need to understand human anatomy? Via Quora.

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Emerging writers vs those who make $100,000 a year.

Finding #2: Indie Publishing is a Viable Pathway to Success
We wanted to know if there was any correlation between how an author was published and whether or not it got them to the 100k club. The results were pretty surprising to us. Of all 100kers none were purely traditionally published. To be fair, only about 5% of overall respondents were solely traditionally published (James Patterson did not take our survey), so traditionally published authors didn’t make up a big part of the surveyed audience, but none of them were in the 100K club.

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The New York Times tells us to schedule time to be creative.

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Internet headline writers hate themselves.

In many non-public industries, success is like hide-and-seek. Companies find an advantage—a secret sauce, like the Coca Cola formula or a Netflix algorithm—and guard its secrecy at all costs. But web journalism is a radically public business, where writers can see what headline tropes get retweets, which stories blow up on Facebook, and which companies finish the month with the most readers. This business isn't like hide-and-seek. It's like Sardines, the derivative game where one person hides (e.g., under the sink), everybody else tries to find and join them, and the last person who doesn't see the clump of people in the kitchen is the loser. That's web journalism. Ruthlessly maximizing audience means figuring out what's working—for you and for everybody like you—and doing it over and over.
Writers are caught between the commercial instinct to maximize attention to articles that they've spent lots of time writing and the aesthetic instinct to not hate every fiber of their very being after they write the headline and press the publish button.

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Hide secrets in your writing.

How to hide secrets in your story
The true aim of hiding secrets in your story is to give the reader autonomy – to give them reason and motivation to investigate your writing and engage with it on the deepest possible level; one where you’re no longer around to guide them. Because of this, there are actually a couple of ways to hide your secrets. 

Codes and ciphers

...Dan Brown’s Deception Point includes a series of letters and numbers on its last page, offering readers a code to solve. Using the book itself, the codes can be translated into individual letters, which can then be placed into a five-by-five square to reveal the message [redacted - follow the link if you really care] 

... 

References and clues
References and clues are a less direct way of engaging the reader, but can be incredibly satisfying in their own right. Books like The Eyre Affair and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen populate their stories with characters from famous works of literature.

...
Context and hindsight

Context and hindsight are the most natural ways to seed secrets into your story. When, for example, the reader learns the true identity of Fight Club’s Tyler Durden, earlier scenes take on new meaning, and a second read-through renders familiar scenes in a different, transformational light.

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Secrets and lies

... 

The theory is a patchwork of throwaway moments, strange comments, and interlinked details, and it’s unclear whether it will ever be confirmed or denied in the books themselves. In a series built on myth and intrigue, it’s a tantalizing possibility – a treasure trail that invites fans to think back and interrogate scenes, even as they wonder how it could come to a head in the future. If the theory is true, it’s a masterclass in how to hide secrets in your story, and it never needs to be resolved to have value. There’s as much enjoyment in piecing together a behind-the-scenes story as there is in seeing a theory turn out to be right.

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Modern Busy Town.

Image shrunk greatly, to see full size, follow the link.
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One trait I kinda/sorta share with Gates and Branson. We take notes. At the link are five tips, from which I have removed the details from, leaving below only the titles:

1. Create your own system. ...
2. Write down your thoughts immediately.
3. Expound on your thoughts later.
4. Store your notebooks for future reference.
5. Review your archive regularly for patterns or associations. 

Semi-related: I have been rereading Kim and reading Bayonets to Lhasa as research for my steampunk novel set in Nepal. Mostly, I've been using my Kindle's highlight feature but I should be writing down my notes and remarking why I found them interesting.
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TWIC: formatting and publishing, carving tool, ninjas, atmosphere, scientific writing, editing,

A tutorial on formatting and publishing your e-book. THe tutorial uses screenshots and open and free software.

Resources:
Word Processor (MS Word, Open Office, Libre Office, etc...)
Google Docs
Calibre E-Book ManagerAn Epub Validator (There are many of these out there, but this one is free and was recommended by my original distributor)
Your Novel.

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My friend the Big Ho also offers some suggestions on e-publishing.
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Plotting, planning and cooking up, 24 ways. I tend to do something like the 'tentpole moments'

TENTPOLE MOMENTS
A story in your head may require certain keystone events to be part of the plot. “Betty-Sue must get sucked into the time portal outside Schenectady, because that’s why her ex-boyfriend Booboo begins to build a time machine in earnest which will accidentally unravel space-and-time.” You might have five, maybe ten of these. Write them down. These are the elements that, were they not included, the plot would fall down (like a tent without its poles). The narrative space between the tentpoles is uncharted territory.
BEGINNING, MIDDLE, END
Write three paragraphs, each detailing the rough three acts found in every story: the inciting incident and outcome of the beginning (Act I), the escalation and conflict in the middle (Act II), the climactic culmination of events and the ease-down denoument of the end (Act III). You can, if you want, choose the elemental changes-in-state you might find at the end of each act, too — the pivot point on which the story shifts. This document probably isn’t more than a page’s worth of wordsmithy. Simple and elegant.
A SERIES OF SEQUENCES
The saying goes that an average screenplay usually offers up eight or nine sequences (a sequence being a series of scenes that add together to form common narrative purpose, like, say, the Attack On The Death Star sequence from Star Wars or the Kevin James Makes Love To All The Animals In Order To Make The Audience Feel Shame sequence from Paul Blart, Zoo Abortion). So, chart the sequences that will go into your screenplay. If you’re writing prose, I don’t know how many sequences a novel should have — more than a film, probably (or alternately, each sequence is granted a greater conglomeration of scenes).

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Need a job? Have some unsavory skills that are somehow spectacular but discrete? Japan needs ninjas!
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Atmospheric Background Music. Many options: Vampire's Castle, Lonesome West, Weirder Things? They got it.
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I think I need a curved carving tool like this one.

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A few from Quora:
Scientific writing is hard, here are some guidelines. James Emmerson had great suggestions and explanations.
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Marketing or finding an audience for a storytelling blog.
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A confused question about editing and drafts, I think.
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Joe Rogan. I think he was on New Radio. Nowadays, I mostly know him as a moon-landing denier. Some people love his podcast. I am trying it out, listening to his interview with Dr Jordan Peterson.The same interview is on Youtube. Peterson is a U of T professor of psychology who also runs an online writing program where students write about their past, present and future. I haven't dug into any of this yet, but it looks interesting.
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Before you outline. Huh?

TWIC: adverbs,stone work,maps

I have read many advice columns on writing; I suspect I have spent more time doing that than actually writing. That aside, one common piece of advice was to limit the amount of adverbs you use. Instead of "Ran quickly", say "Raced" or "sprinted". As I see it, the advice suggests adverbs are an oral device to fix a wrong word after the fact. You can't unsay something but you can modify it. You can however delete a word and replace it.

Is there any evidence or measurable reason to avoid adverbs? There is at least some research on who uses more and fewer adverbs. From Nabokov's favorite word is mauve, Tyler Cowan offers ly-adverb usage per ten thousand words:

Hemingway: 80
Twain: 81
Melville: 126
Austen: 128
J.K. Rowling: 140
E L James: 155

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In carving stone, you measure many, many times and cut carefully!

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Google Maps the best open-secret writing tool.

While writing and researching, I desperately wanted to visit Liverpool. To wander its streets. View its architecture. Feel its history. But what was a working mom of four kiddos in Texas supposed to do?
Enter Google Maps. The best writing tool that no one knows about. Well, of course, you know about Google Maps. But do you use it in your writing?
As a real estate agent, I used Google Maps all the time. For directions. For a sneak peek at a neighborhood. To see if a pool at a prospective house took up all of the yard when my client still wanted green space.
But as a writer? I had never heard of authors using it. And yet, it became the very best tool in my kit.

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TWIC: Sykes' advice, writing platform, writing,

Sykes on Writing

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I have some suspicions about this product. Everywriter. It was described to me as a Chinese version of Scrivener but free. Friends who pointed it out admired the Chinglish: stories on everywriter don't have a climax, they have an orgasm. Or so I have been told. I guess I'm an everywriter virgin.

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Canadian Embassy in Seoul Blog is promoting a young writers fiction contest. Entries must use '150' in some way - this is Canada's 150 anniversary! I believe this is an international contest so be sure to find the local embassy's information.
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non-writers a work. Wait staff don't write the menu, but they might be asked to document how their job works. Here are five tips to help them make intelligible documents.

1. Create a documentation standard. This will be vital. Without a standard, you’ve failed before you begin.
2. [This is actually #5. I snipped the intervening ones. Follow the link for the others] Get users to review the documents. Ask them if they can quickly find and understand the information they need. Modify the documents based on their feedback.

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Microsoft Paint is more powerful than you thought.
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7 Easy Art Tutorials.
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TWIC: books and writing, creativity damaged, chocolate, online goodies

A review of Ken Robinson's TED talk.
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It's not just education destroying your creativity, it is society as well!
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Two from CBC Books:

• How managing a radio station in the Congo led to a memoir.
• Tips for becoming a better poet.

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Niice seems a neat way to organize images for discussion.
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Drinking chocolate with added caffeine to improve your thought processes. The link gives a recipe and its rationale but it also describes the drink as 'tasty'. I'm not sure as sugar and milk apparently block uptake of the important nutrients. Yes, I am drinking sweetened milk tea right now.
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Working on the road, some tips.
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Experimental storytelling with Tor Labs.
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An ASCII spaceship generator.
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Free online textbooks.
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My friend Monica Heilman blogged about why people who can't draw should draw anyway.
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Notes from Philip Pullman regarding fiction for children at the Astrid Lindgren Award website.

TWIC: More Sci Am, lectures, making stuff up, motivation

Dreaming and Daydreaming and more in March's issue - nothing free online though.
Update? At least one of the Daydreaming articles is available free online at their site.

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Being creatively dishonest is somehow more acceptable.

We are much harsher on people who rob banks than on people who achieve the same objective but through creative methods like those employed by Abagnale. This is important as it introduces a bias in the way we judge dishonesty and punish it, thus reducing the likelihood of seeing more of the same behavior in the future. But there is another reason why our research is potentially interesting: creative forms of unethical behavior are more likely to be imitated than other forms of unethical behavior because people admire the behavior’s creativity, we discovered. It seems that people view creativity as a positive, valuable trait that provides creative cheaters with a halo that makes their transgressions more palatable and more socially contagious.

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Meditation as a means of studying the brain.
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Ass-on-chair. "There is no trick to writing"
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College course lectures saved. They should be available here in April.
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Use a real-world setting or a made-up setting in your writing?

6 Advantages and Disadvantages of a Real-Life Setting
1. A Real-Life Setting Is Instantly Recognizable
2. A Real-Life Setting Offers Built-In Verisimilitude
3. A Real-Life Setting Requires Less Brainstorming4. Real-Life Settings Require More Research

...

2 Advantages and Disadvantages of a Made-Up Setting
1. A Made-Up Setting Frees You From the Burden of the Facts
2. A Made-Up Setting Demands Active Creativity

 Reader(s) familiar with this blog will know of my habit of removing all the details from the list above. To read them, follow the link.
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Jack Dorsey's Dos and Don'ts.

That Do list is as follows:
Stay present
Be vulnerable
Drink only lemon water and red wine
Six sets of 20 squats and push-ups every day
Run for 3 miles
Meditate on this list
Stand up straight
Spend 10 minutes with a heavy bag
Say hello to everyone
Get 7 hours of sleep
And the “Don’ts”:
Don’t avoid eye contact
Don’t be late
Don’t set expectations that you can’t meet
Don’t eat sugar 

Don’t drink hard liquor or beer during the weekday

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Forget the career ladder, organize your creative assets.

The strugglers live from project to project, gig to gig. Each new project feels like starting afresh, from scratch. Each new client needs to be pitched and sold from scratch. They are always too busy or too skint to do the work they really want to do. It’s exhausting and demoralising.
The ones who prosper take a longer term approach. As well as living day-to-day, they carve out time to create assets that will make everything easier, more enjoyable, and more profitable in the future. As time goes by, they have more and more assets, and the effects start to multiply – to the point where they achieve exponentially more with their efforts than they had ever thought possible.

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Our Gutenberg moment. It's easier to publish and that means it's easier to publish crap.
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TWIC: maps, Agatha Christie, writing sex scenes, Jen Lee interviewed, Purpose, libraries,

It might be time to make this a cartography blog. I've certainly offered a number of map generators, and design tools. Here's another.

So a few weeks ago, I discovered that you can use Google Maps to draw on existing cities and make custom maps of your fictional locations. Needless to say, I was EXTREMELY EXCITED. Being an author practically guarantees you will struggle with real life details like travel distance at some point in your book. If you're writing about a real city, the bar is even higher. Even if you're writing about your own city, a map can be a life saver just for keeping everything straight in your head.
For years now, I've had to draw those maps by hand, and let me just say: a cartographer I am not. Enter Google Maps. Let's say you're writing a story set in London. Going to Google Maps to look up a street map is obvious, but Google has given us tools to take that even further, allowing authors to draw new boundaries, set landmarks, and make notes right on a custom map that you can save! And best of all, it's free!! (Well, okay, there is a paid version that has more features, but for our purposes, the free version works perfectly well).
All that said, the Google Maps customization interface isn't exactly user friendly. Most people don't even know it exists (I found it by accident). This a crime! Something this useful should be known by all! Lots of people on Twitter agreed with me. So, by popular request, here is my guide to using Google Maps for world building.

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Agatha Christie's secrets.

1. Christie introduced ROMANCE into the murder mystery.


2. Christie was very good at hiding the identity of the murderer. And she usually did this cleverly and fairly.


Today I’m only going to concentrate on (2), above. (If you would like to read more about including romance in a story, see: The Structure of a Romance Story.)

How to Make Readers Think the Murderer Couldn't Have Done It.


There’s no other way to say it: Agatha Christie deceived her readers! And we loved it. How did she do this?

7 Ways to Disguise a Murderer:


1. Agatha Christie made readers think the murderer was a victim. (Peril at End House.)


Examples: Peril at End House, The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor, And Then There Were None.
In PERIL AT END HOUSE Nick—the eventual murderer—convinces Poirot that someone is trying to kill her. She is subtle and drops clues she knows the great detective (who loves clues!) will pick up on.

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How to Write a Sex Scene:
1. Write it
2. Realize someone will read it
3. Delete it
4. Destroy your computer
5. Fake your death

— Sam Sykes (@SamSykesSwears) March 17, 2017

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@SamSykesSwears I've always wondered, do you & your Mom just pretend neither of you write sex scenes?

— Kat Arnett (@katarnett) March 17, 2017

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Jen Lee draws comics documenting her life here in South Korea. Here is an interview.
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Rob Beshizza shows us his writing space.

I'm one of those people who has trouble writing at length on my main machine, because of all the distractions it offers. Email and messaging and social networking: they all combine to form the "ludic loop" that Mark recently blogged about.
I've tried various things over the years to help keep me focused, from simple full-screen word processors such as WriteRoom and FocusWriter to gadgets like the Alphasmart and Freewrite. But apps are a tab away from fun, and glorified typewriters tend to expose their limitations in odd and frustrating ways.

Full-sized image at the link.

GRR Martin does something similar. He uses an old word processor that does 'all the things he needs and none of the things he doesn't'. Autoplay video and GRRM interview here. Specifically, he uses Wordstar.
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What is the purpose of creativity? This is a question at Quora that I answered. I think Velikovsky's answers is excellent and contains links to interesting articles on creativity and evolution. His blog is here.
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Gaiman on reading and libraries

I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?
It’s simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.

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R.L. Stine's Writing Program

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Songwriting at Literature suggestions An ESL instructor colleague asked for suggestions for a Songwriting as Literature course. Here are some of the suggestions
Bob Dylan - Nobel Prize winner
The Road Goes on Forever - Robert Earl Keen
Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay"
Rappers, sorted by the size of their vocabulary
 The Logical Song - Supertramp
Simon and Garfunkel
They Might Be Giants
Wesley Willis
American Pie
American Songwriter.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads

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Pixar Story Telling class - Did I offer this link before?

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Starting writing late in life. The writer started writing novels at age 47 and says that's old. I guess at 49, I am in trouble.

So what about those thirty years I wasted in self-doubt?
I don’t think they were wasted, actually. In fact, I’d argue that the best thing a writer can do is delay publishing for as long as possible.
This isn’t an attractive argument; it’s not sexy. Nobody’s going to make any Top Thirty Under Thirty lists that way. And dammit, writing is difficult. It takes so much hard work and dedication. How long can a person go on working with nothing to show for it?
As long as you can.
Those thirty years didn’t just make me a writer. They made me a good writer. That paralyzing self-doubt morphed into a keen sense for quality in my own work. When I write something that stinks, I can usually smell it. I’ve been reading for more than forty years, so I have thousands of great books and stories banked for information and inspiration. And best of all, I have a lifetime’s worth of unplumbed material to draw on—I’ve seen the world in all its glory and ugliness.

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TWIC: too many twists, Head guns, fonts, to-do lists,patents v prizes

The problem of plot twists.

I’m not sure if the problem is the much touted demise of critical thinking, of big picture analysis, or of our shortened attention spans, but too much narrative art seems to think that it doesn’t matter if the whole doesn’t make sense so long as the moment-to-moment stuff keeps us on the edge of our seats. It does matter, if only because if we realize that the solutions and revelations don’t really stand up to scrutiny, then what’s the point of watching at all? The twist in a tale can be potent when it’s earned and part of a larger narrative design, but when it’s just a flash bomb, a distraction from the lack of substance in the story, it derails the whole plot, setting everything off down some new track like a hastily thrown point on a railway line.

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Fletcher Hanks wasn't necessarily a great artist but everyone must love this image! The Leopard Women of Venus riding Giant Saurians and firing comets from their head guns!

Good Lord, indeed!
A little more info on the man at Wikipedia
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I don't pay a lot of attention to fonts. I am not even sure of the way to describe groups of them. I like serif fonts - or should I say, "fonts that have serifs" and that is nearly all I know. Wait! At a teaching conference I learned that educators should use two or three different fonts in their handouts; one for instructions, one for questions the student needs to answer and a third for any examples given.

In this video, the creator of Comic Sans defends and discusses his controversial font.
"If you didn't notice (a piece of art), I considered that was bad," Connare says. "And if you did notice, it was good."

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Productivity is always my biggest challenge. Maybe I should write my to-do lists so the public can read them.  Joe Reddington made the experiment as part of an attempt to live more transparently. I was fishing through his blog post and only focused on the parts I was interested in for this blog so my discussion might not be entirely accurate on the big details.  He posted a graph that I had trouble following so I made some additions, then shrank it a little. To see what I changed, follow the link above but I will also describe them below the pic.

This is a 'stress-chart' and he probably describes what it measures elsewhere. I don't know what the colours mean. The letters at the bottom of the chart are the months and probably labelled for each each which is why there are multiple copies of them. I added the names of the months below. I also added "Some measure of stress", the yellow line and "Started public To-do list". In his post, he described doing so in May and there certainly is a drop in stress after that.
He thought his To-do lists were clear and informative, but:

Turns out I was missing something important. When it was a list for me, it looked great; when I decided to make it public, it instantly looked very poor.
I suddenly saw:

• several copies of the same task,
• tasks that were questions rather that statements
• tasks that were badly written
• repeating tasks that had gradually changed meaning in my head.

So I started rewriting. Of course, to write out a task properly, you first have to think properly about the task.

• “the azulejoe javascript could do with refactoring” becomes “Spend 40 minutes refactoring the azulejoe javascript”
• “do the search of ISAAC twitter” becomes “Define ISAAC twitter as a project”
• “properly work out how much staff costs you’ve applied” becomes both “Update the bids applies for file” and “Change structure of the ‘bids applied for”

Suddenly each of these took less thinking when I cast my eye down the list. That makes them easier to start, and that makes them easier to finish.

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Patents vs the prize system in the eighteenth century.

The empirical analysis shows that inventors of items that were valuable in the marketplace typically chose to obtain patents and to bypass the prize system. Owing to such adverse selection, prizes were negatively related to subsequent areas of important technological discovery. The RSA ultimately became disillusioned with the prize system, which they recognized had done little to promote technological progress and industrialization.

TWIC: the problem with happiness, fads, quora, 100 blocks,

From Quartz comes news of the value, or lack, of happiness in creative ventures:

Mark Davis, a psychologist at the University of North Texas Department of Management divides creativity into two phases; initial idea generation and subsequent problem-solving. His review of research onfeelings and creativity concluded that a positive mood is useful when first brainstorming, processing information, and coming up with as many ideas as possible—you don’t want to bring judgment into that, because it could stifle idea generation.

But rigor is the key to overcoming obstacles and completing tasks—andgood mood doesn’t improve problem-solving, which involves judgments that almost by necessity won’t feel good: critique and evaluation, experimentation and failure. The stress that arises from problems may be unpleasant but it also motivates us to complete tasks, Davis says. In other words, negative emotions are actually beneficial to the creative process.

and

That said, psychologists aren’t suggesting that you live in an emotional maelstrom for creativity’s sake. Emma Seppala, Science Director at the Stanford University Center for Compassion and Altruism and author ofThe Happiness Track explains, “High-intensity positive emotions can sometimes be just as taxing as high negative emotions. Creativity does not so much happen when we are stressed and highly emotional.”

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Science Fiction comics are fad, says 1940 science fiction author.
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Own your work and get paid for it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the economics of writing online. Making a comfortable living only by writing is tough and very few independents are able to do it. More successful are those who are able to get away from writing online by speaking at conferences, writing books, starting podcasts, selling merchandise...

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On Quora, How Does Creativity Work? Only one answer so far, but it's a doozy.

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Also on Quora,
people who are making a living with creativity. I definitely enjoyed the Geologic Podcast a few years ago but haven't listened to it for a while. One answer makes no sense to me, discussing using Amazon FBA as if it were a product in itself.
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The best jobs for creativity (an excerpt):

There are various forms of these jobs
1 A job that has short hours and leaves you free most of the day
such as a barista
2 Part-time jobs that are done for two or three days a week, but make enough for you to live on. These are commonly called ‘Casual jobs’ and mean you live week-by-week
3 Seasonal jobs that are done for several weeks but allow you to earn enough live for several weeks on your earnings. Often done by students

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How do writers research their books?
The respondents range from a ghost writer to a researcher to a fiction author so there is a good variety.
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How Do I Write a Good Essay that I'm Not Interested In? This question seems to seek that core of creativity and the ability to fake sincerity.
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To work on your productivity, look at the day as 100 ten  minute blocks.  One thousand minutes is sixteen hours, forty minutes so that is a full day. How much time will you spend playing online solitaire? Adding content to your blog? Travel each day? I am writing this in October but it will publish either Oct 31 or Nov 1, so how many minutes should I devote to Nanowrimo each day?

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Maybe there's hope for me. Go from 'I can't draw' to "Art for sale'.

TWIC: embarrassment, Advice from Wendig, webcomics maker

Oops. I schedule This Week In Creativity blog posts to appear on Monday or Tuesday and then just add material until it publishes.  Several days can go by while I add content. I am writing these sentences on Sept 23. In the last one, one of the first links was to a description of Bill Waterson's contributions to comics. And, one of the last ones was too. Yes, I added it to the list twice. Sorry. And now I have removed one of the links from the list and changed the title.
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Chuck Wendig is a popular and successful writer who also writes advice books for wannabes like me. Somewhere (the links from Boingboing aren't clear to me), he has 25 pieces of advice.

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An Australian library has released a webcomic maker. It looks fun.

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Kate Kendall's writing newsletter discusses the value of actual experience over Google searches. She rode-along with a police officer and his canine for a night.

Seek out research opportunities wherever you can. Don't be satisfied with just reading and googling and interviewing. Although all those are needed, researching experiences is most valuable. It's also fun and one of the privileges of being a writer.

What's some of what I learned on my night out? What the adrenaline that races through Officer Hobbs feels like. It permeates the air and is absorbed through your pores. You breath it in, smell it, hear it, sense it. Your heart beats it through your veins all shift. This four legged officer is ready at all times. He's completely devoted to his partner and always on the look out for him. Their partnership and dedication was inspiring. And both officers have intriguing personalities.

Semi-related, I presume her newsletter is a way to teach in touch with readers and to create new readers. In choosing to discuss her article, I decided to be thorough and looks at her works.
Huh. Like me, she has works on the way but nothing available to buy today.
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I hope this is true. I fear it is a platitude to make people like me feel better.

Image greatly shrunk and found on Tayloredexpressions' Instagram page
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Creativity and genius are often discussed together. On that tenuous thread, Sci Am has an article about innate talent vs training. They authors are uncertain. We know that some people have 'perfect pitch'. That is, with no reference note, they can hear a note and name it. I think that means saying, "A#" or the like. This is a rare skill. But it can be learned and some researchers used this point to show that innate talent might not exist. Further reading of their work, however, shows that it took two to eight years for people to learn this skill. That suggests that it is quite a talent indeed.
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TWIC: civilizations, maps, teaching, archived children's books, paradox

Guy Gaveriel Kay is a Canadian author who fist achieved success with his Fionavar fantasy series, an adult cross of Lion, Witch and Wardrobe with Middle Earth. I liked them as a young adult but I am uncertain if I would now. I am afraid to find out how my taste in books might have changed.

Here is a 17 minute interview with him where he discusses civilizations on the edge.
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Here is a playlist of twenty videos on how to draw fantasy maps. The videos range from eight minutes to over an hour in length with most of them around fifteen minutes.
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Nanowrimo has a series of 'plot doctoring' advice articles. The first one I became aware of is #9, building a strong plot.

The article explains these essential scenes in the image (which has been cropped. if you want to see the cut out three scenes in the bottom third, follow the link).
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As an educator and would-be creative-ist, I have read much of what Sir Ken Robinson has to say.  This post is about outdoor education rather than his more typical public fair about creativity but I still like it and want to spread the word. Again, I have trouble connecting this with my blog's theme, but it is worth noting:

He lists five reasons why taking learning outdoors is a good idea:
Nature is a powerful resource.
Children can learn through practical hands-on activities.
You can tap into children's curiosity.
It is a social experience and children learn from working together.Learning outdoors is fun.

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Another one for educators more than of a purely creative article: Ten tips to use Powerpoint better. Here is part of number seven:

What does it do?
This feature allows you to remove the background of images.
How does it work?
There is a lot of information about how background removal works. Try thistutorial from MrRoughton.com or this tutorial from ellenfinkelstein.com.
Select your image and go to the format ribbon.
Click on the remove background icon on the left-hand side of the ribbon.
Parts of the image will now be highlighted in purple.
Resize the shape of the box to the edge of the image.
Click on mark areas to keep and your cursor will turn into a pen. Click on image to create a point or draw a line for areas to keep.
Click on mark areas to remove and your cursor will turn into pen. Click on image to create a point or draw a line for areas to remove.
Click on keep changes and anything in purple will disappear.
Note: Click on reset image on the format ribbon in order to restore the background.
How can I use this as a teacher?
This feature is ideal for creating for collages, posters and general graphic design in PowerPoint.

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6000 children's books are now archived at this site online.
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I have thought of residencies for artists as ways to recreate the historic patronage system.  A wealthy person or group funds the work of an artist. Wikipedia tells me I have it mostly right:

Artist-in-residence programs and other residency opportunities exist to invite artists, academicians, curators, and all manner of creative people for a time and space away from their usual environment and obligations. They provide a time of reflection, research, presentation and/or production. They also allow an individual to explore his/her practice within another community; meeting new people, using new materials, experiencing life in a new location. Art residencies emphasize the importance of meaningful and multi-layered cultural exchange and immersion into another culture.

I bring this up because one writer is getting extra time to work on her project and has only one distraction, but it is a big one! From the Vancouver Sun:

Rebecca Moss is the British artist stranded on the Hanjin Geneva owned by the Hanjin shipping line that filed for receivership Wednesday. She was on board as part of the 23 Days at Sea Residency organized by Access Gallery in Vancouver.
The Hanjin Geneva is now somewhere off the coast of Japan near Tokyo. It cannot dock because ports around the world have barred Hanjin ships over concerns that include the payment of port and service fees.

...
How has the news about the bankruptcy changed any routine you might have had on the Hanjin Geneva?
Before the news, there was always a feeling that we were moving in a line toward a horizon, and there was a real sense of purpose. This was reflected in the way I approached my day — I had knowledge that I had a certain number of days left and I was trying to plan to execute my ideas accordingly.
However, now it feels more like we are a slowly drifting island, a feeling that I am sure will intensify when we actually drop anchor. I have found myself wandering more and feeling more in the present — taking each moment as it comes and not knowing when the end will be.

Via Boingboing
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The idea of a residency still interests me. Here is a list of 26 such residencies from last year. I think all or most of those in the US. This list from Aerogrammestudio is more international.
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Struggling to write does not mean you are not a writer.

Honestly, I’m nervous that I can’t live up to the promise “writer” seems to convey. Writing doesn’t come easily for me. There are times it flows, but sometimes it feels like trying to wade through sinking sand.
Like so many others, I fall into thinking that putting words on paper always comes effortlessly to a certain segment of people, who therefore deserve the title of “writer.” If you struggle to get your meaning across in the written form, the thinking goes, you must not really be a “writer.”
But if that were true, who among us would be worthy of the title? Sure, words come more easily to some people than others, but natural wordsmiths still have to work hard to master their craft. And even the most seasoned writer knows the feeling of agonizing over a sentence or deleting two-hours-worth of dull paragraphs in frustration.

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At Quora is a thread with lists of places that will pay you to write.
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The author of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies is being sued because his work is not creative enough.

In the complaint, the publisher claims that Grahame-Smith’s latest manuscript was not original enough and pulls too much content from the original public domain work.

I enjoyed P&P&Z and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, but I can't say how original the former work is.  I am one of those philistines who hasn't read the original.
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Illustrator paradox: Cheap paper is bad for painting. Cheap paper is good for drawing.

— Grant Snider (@grantdraws) September 14, 2016