Planning for the ending of the novel. Every one of my novels has stalled out approaching the ending. I can find my way through the story but bringing it all together is hugely difficult - for me, at least.
---British Council and creativity.
- Creativity and IELTS (an English as a Second Language test)
- Eight steps to being a creative teacher.
- The author of 8 steps has a free ESL and creativity book at this site: PDF.
Devil Girl From Mars was the movie that got Octavia Butler interested in writing.
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Add some curses to your books to protect them.
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Velekovsky's answer on Quora to What makes a writer great?
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More from Velikovsky: creativity training and a variety of his links.
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Is it easy to write a book?
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Inspiration? Inspirobot, the random inspiration saying generator.
I like this deepity:
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Prisoners of Gravity was a great show and here it is getting some credit.
...when it comes to sci-fi TV, Prisoners of Gravity has been seldom imitated and never duplicated. But Askwith says the internet is starting to pick up some of the slack.
“I think podcasts really seem to mirror the energy of Prisoners of Gravity, because they can, because they don’t have to go after a mass audience,” he says. “If our legacy has been anything, it’s not that we affected television, it may be that we affected podcasts.”
Via boingboing.
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Doing stand up comedy. I do it as an amateur for fun.
What I thought it was before I did it: You walk up, tell jokes for 10 minutes, then collect your free beer or $20.
What it actually is: You write 30 pages of jokes then meet with two other writers, who are also writing jokes (but different from yours). You’re all brutally honest with each other. You cut and trim. Some things don’t work. They point out logical inconsistencies. You end up with two pages.
Back to the drawing board. Repeat this process. Eventually you have 5 pages that will get you through a ten minute set. But, uh oh, one of your topical jokes appears in the media. More than one person can think of the same joke. “I had this joke first,” you think. But that doesn’t matter. You replace.
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Many famous creatives, writers, innovators and original thinkers of our generation keep journals— for many, it is a creative necessity, for others, a place for exploration, and for some an art form in and of itself.
But you don’t have to be creative, scientist or an innovator for this practice to be worthwhile.
Journaling helps you prioritize, clarify thinking, and accomplish your most important tasks, over urgent busy work.
Thinking in writing has this magical quality of clarifying your thoughts.
Tim Ferriss calls journaling the deloading phase in life. He explains, “I use it as a tool to clarify my thinking and goals, much as Kevin Kelly (one of my favorite humans) does. The paper is like a photography darkroom for my mind.”
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