My neck of the woods is about to get hit by possibly the worst snow storm since the 70’s. Fun! Not.

So right now I’m in scramble mode, with the rest of my friends and neighbors, all zillion of them, to try and get ready for the storm that in some areas, is already here.

I’m thinking this might be a fun way to throw out a writing prompt and see what I get back.

Gentlemen, start your pens/pencils/computers… (vroom, vroom)

The snow started falling before I was ready…

Take it away…have fun!

Julia Cameron is the author of, “The Artist’s Way.” The book/program is supposed to help unblock the blocked and discover the undiscovered artist in each of us. It may sound a little woo-woo for some people, but oh well.

I’ve started and stopped this program about twice now. However, I have restarted it and am determined to finish this time, as I discussed in an earlier blog post. So far, so good. I know I will finish it this time. I expect you to yell at me if I don’t. We can yell at me together. It’ll be fun.

Anyway, below is an interview with Julia Cameron, primarily about “The Morning Pages.” (In other clips linked on the page, she discusses other aspects of The Artist’s Way as well.)  The Morning Pages are one of the key stepping stones in The Artist’s Way path. Seriously, when I first started the course, I thought they were pointless. I’ve always resisted free writing. I’m more of a stare out the window till inspiration hits, incubate the ideas for a while and have them pretty much solid before I ever commit them to paper or screen. Staring at a blank page freaks me out and tends to scare away my already flighty muse.  I arrive at the blank page armed with ideas, but that’s not the point of the morning pages.

Last week though, I had a breakthrough.  I’d been doing the morning pages, but filling them with ho-hum journal-ish type things like how I wish I had a cup of coffee, and, oh dear god why won’t the cat make me a cup of coffee, or if I could just use the force to make myself a cup of coffee I’d be so happy. You get the point.

However, last week I actually wrote a piece of fiction. Not a story really, but a little slice of time. Just a page long, more of a descriptive piece than anything, but there it was. It came from nowhere. I hadn’t tossed it around beforehand, I hadn’t developed a mental sketch of anything. I just sat down and wrote, and it was great. Can’t wait to see how the rest of this journey unfolds.

Click here to see Julia Cameron on The Artist’s Way.

Back in November, I wrote a post about Two Kittens Riding a Goat. Yes…it *was* safe for work! Jeez! Theoatmeal.com had done a lovely visual guide to using apostrophes.

Well, they’ve done it again, only this time, they are helping all of us understand semi-colons.

Click here to see what in the world hairy knuckles have to do with semi-colons.

Have a great Friday and a wonderful, whimsical weekend. <–(intentional use of alliteration)

This morning I was discussing my latest audiobook experience with my husband. I very much like the story, but my one complaint is the frequent use of alliteration. Alliteration, of course, is the use of the same sound at the beginning of words in close quarters. Such as, beautiful bouncing baby boy.

A lot of authors use it and many how-to books and writing coaches encourage it as a useful tool in your writing. So what’s so annoying about it? Now get ready, because I don’t usually get too opinionated here. For me personally, it makes the words stand out too much. In some cases, that’s fine. A lot of entertainers or character names have alliteration. See also, Mickey Mouse, Lucy Lawless and Nicholas Nickelby. (How’s that for a strange cross section of people?)

Anyway, in those cases, it works great! You want your name to stand out, so by all means, alliterate away! But mid-paragraph descriptions in novels, I just don’t think it works.  Example: “She walked up the steep, seemingly solid staircase.” Besides the fact that that is one of the worst sentences I’ve ever written, I think the nest of S’s is distracting. Instead of thinking about the staircase, or the peril the character may or may not be in, I’m thinking, “Wow. That’s a lot of S’s.” Two might be good, but three plus and you’re walking that lame, laborious line.

As my husband pointed out, it also works for tabloid headlines, because again, you want those to stand out.

Bat Boy Becomes a Baseball Player!

You get the idea.

Will I stop reading a book if it has alliteration? Of course not. For me, it’s all about story. But…is it annoying for me personally? Yes.

What are your thoughts? Do you consciously use alliteration? When reading, does it distract you or am I alone in this thing? (I could be! I won’t hold it against you if I am.) As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

When writing fiction, one of the key elements is location and setting. Setting is more than just the city. It’s the environment, the weather, smells, sounds, etc. This has always been one of my weak points, but I’m working on it.

My work in progress, “Shaping Fate,” takes place in London, 1349. At this time, London was gripped by the Black Plague. Believe it or not, it took me a while to figure out “when” to set the story. I knew my protagonist, William, was English, I also knew he wouldn’t be in England for a long time, but I couldn’t figure out the best era in London’s history to tell the story. Two of the themes in “Shaping Fate” are death and rebirth, but the plague still didn’t come to my mind.

One day, I had the good fortune to be watching the BBC’s “A History of Britain” series on the History Channel and there it was! The plague! It decimated Europe, especially the cities, where it was passed quickly from person to person, but from the ashes rose a new breed of Europeans who helped to usher in the Renaissance. The setting for my story was made and I never looked back.

There are tons of great books out there too about this specific period of time and what things were like for these people. It’s a fascinating period and has proven to be a wonderful backdrop for my story.

How do you pick setting? Is it one of the first things that come to you or do you try and find one that fits into your story?

Happy Tuesday, everybody. Tuesday…I’ve never really liked Tuesday. It’s just there. It’s not the middle or the end of the week and doesn’t have the distinction of being the first day of the week, it’s just…there.

Anyway, forgive the rant. I had the pleasure of seeing “Lemonade” last week. I mentioned this movie in a previous post. In my opinion, it was very well done. It’s inspiring to hear all the different stories and see people who go out there and do something they’ve always wanted to do after losing their job.

The good news is…you can watch the movie too. It’s on Hulu now. It’s only 35 minutes long, so if you have a spare half-hour or so, I recommend you check it out.

Click here to see the movie in its entirety.

Is there a piece of art, or music or writing that you wish you had done or been a part of?

I thought about this recently while talking with a friend who said they wish they could have been involved in the Star Wars movies. That got me thinking, well, me too. Who wouldn’t  want to say they had a part in one of the cinematic phenomenons of our time? And then I started thinking about other movies that would have been fun to be a part of, or books I’d written, songs I’d sung, etc., because it IS an amazing feeling to be a part of something truly great and something you are proud of.

Of COURSE our projects are ones that we are happy to be a part of, and it one day, it will be OUR projects that people wish they were a part of, but for now, what is that guitar riff that you wish you had played, or that line you wish you’d written?And no fair saying “Harry Potter” or something that just made a lot of money. You have to pick something that you are passionate about even if not a single dollar was made.

There are a few on my list, but I’ll keep it brief. For music, I’ve got to say I wish I could have done something with Queen, or with David Bowie. I’m not a songwriter or a musician, so I have no clue how I would be involved in a project with them, but they are artists I would have liked to work with. I have worked with an incredibly talented musician, Martin Page, but not in a musical way, more in a marketing kind of way, so who knows. Maybe David Bowie will call. If you’re not familiar with Martin’s work, I strongly encourage you to check him out. Working with Martin has been very rewarding, so I can check that off my list.

For fiction writing though it’s a tough one because it’s such a solitary pursuit. I would have liked to have met Ernest Hemingway, although I don’t think I could have stuck to his eating red onions and drinking red wine for breakfast regiment. When I do that, my writing is nowhere near as good as his.

I could go on and on, but what are some of your ‘dream’ projects or people?

Ok, so I took a break. A long one. And I’m starting my new year when most people are already starting to sag with their New Year’s resolutions, which they so diligently started on January 1st…or maybe 2nd depending on how much partying went on.

I admit, it’s taken me longer to get out of vacation mode than I had intended, but here we are. Now it’s time to get crackin’.

So how is everybody else doing on their goals? Anybody planning on joining me on the Artist’s Way journey? Well, you’ll all be joining me in one way or another, because I’ll be keeping you posted on my progress. Muaaa aaa aahhhhh!

Anyway, I hope you are having a brilliant 2010 so far. Any news or updates?

Following up with goals…one of my goals this year is to start *and* finish, The Artist’s Way course. For those that don’t know, The Artist’s Way is a book by Julia Cameron, but is also a 12 week program to help with recover your creativity from various blocks, including fear, self-doubt, etc.

I started the course earlier this year when I felt particularly blocked. I wanted to complete the final draft on my novel, but I just couldn’t do it. I had no power, no drive, nothing. When things like that happen, I, like most creative people go to that dark place where I wondered why I even bothered writing. Those tiny thoughts tend to grow exponentially. First it’s why do I do this, next it’s, why bother? You’ll never make it anyway, hell you’ve never even sold a short story. You should be focusing on REAL things, not self-indulgent, artsy-fartsy things.

The problem is, I can’t do it. Every time I come to that point where I think I should give it up, I can’t. Even if I never make a dollar doing it, I can’t stop writing. When I’m writing, I’m happy. When I’m not, I feel like something is missing. So why, if I love it so much, do I run into these blocks? Why does anybody?

Various reasons of course…no time, life gets in the way, etc.

What the Artist Way course tries to do is find out what your blocks are and get you past them. Creativity is one of those ellusive things that we can’t just turn on or off. It comes and goes, and for me anyway, I can never quite pin it down. It’s like one of those friends you have who you LOVE visiting with, but then they don’t call or e-mail for a few weeks or months and you start feeling rejected, but then they come back and everything is right with the world again.

So, in embarking on The Artist’s Way journey, I’m hoping to equip myself with the tools I need to be able to get through these blocks when they happen, because they WILL happen. The people I know who have completed the course have said it was incredibly useful. Fingers crossed. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Have you done The Artist’s Way course or read the book? Any comments or suggestions? If you haven’t and you’re interested, drop me a line, maybe we could be study partners.

I’ve found it! We can all reach the top of the Amazon best-seller list. It doesn’t matter what your book is about, it doesn’t even matter if it’s out of print.

Click here to see Physicist Dr. John Gribbin discuss his secret.

Here’s a link to the original article.

Making a list of celebrity targets, I mean helpers, now.