Alessa’s Adversaria
Adversaria: (pl) (n) a miscellaneous collection of notes, remarks, or observations.
Lone Writer – Chibits: Episode 1
Read the Chibits Intro
Process Vs End Product
As a writer and artist, I have struggled mightily over the past decade (long story). And the more Life got in the way, the more difficult it became to get any creative work done, even on days where I had the time and energy to devote to it. Resistance, as Stephen Pressfield calls it, along with a healthy dose of guilt for not finishing all the projects I wanted to...
Lone Writer Chibits – An Intro
I'm hereby launching what I hope to be a series of whort webtoons (hence the chibits) inspired by my writing adventures--these were initially only meant to be shared via my newsletter, but they're a little image-intensive, so I'll be posting them here instead. I hope you enjoy these mini-tales!
RESTART
Now that January's coming to a close, how are you holding up with your New Year's resolution? Struggling? Given up already? Or, like a rare few among us, are you still going strong? Well, I'm here to tell you that (1) it's totally normal to fall off the horse and have a hard time to get back on it after (particularly if the horse bucked you off first and then kicked...
Working With Your Genius
Both Steven Pressfield and Elizabeth Gilbert speak of daemons in their works The War of Art and Big Magic, daemons being the benevolent outside forces that guide our thoughts and hands to create art and stories and music... Our muses, if you will, but in a very personal sense. It is called flow or being in the zone in modern speak, but these two descriptors fall, in...
Emotion And The Writer
I'm currently (re-)reading Techniques of the Selling Writer* by Dwight V. Swain, as it was recommended to me recently. The book is a basic for beginning writers, or anyone who needs reminders in some of the aspects covered within, which mostly revolve around writing fiction that resonates with readers. Here's an excerpt from the introductory chapter, on Emotion And...
Writing Tools
I've recently (aka this month) changed my writing process, so that it's more in line with Dean Wesley Smith's technique of Writing Into The Dark* (there's a great video on it here by Michael La Ronn). It's essentially about writing without a pre-conceived outline (because writing outlines = using your critical voice = not conducive to being super creative). Instead,...
A Rolling Stone…
Steven Pressfield discusses in his book, The War of Art*, the impact of our own inner Resistance on our desires to accomplish our dreams. Resistance with a capital R, because there's nothing stronger to stop us from accomplishing our dreams than our own inner voice, an inner voice that does everything in its power to hold us back, chiefly out of fear. But... "Fear...
Going Deep – F-R-E-E Writing
F-R-E-E Writing stands for Fast, Raw, Exact-but-Easy writing. It's a stream-of consciousness writing exercise touted by Orna Ross (Irish author and poet, and founder of the Alliance for Independent Authors) as a great tool to plunge into the depths of your soul so that what comes out on the paper is as true to yourself as possible. This exercise can be used in any...
7 Deadly Sins of Narcissism
A crucial step I take prior to writing any novel is to understand all of my main characters fully. That means turning them into proper, 3-dimensional characters, with their goals, their strengths, their flaws, their fears, their dreams, their prejudices, their traumas... You get the picture. "To plot, you need to know what people care about, and why." ~Mastering...