Alessa’s Adversaria
Adversaria: (pl) (n) a miscellaneous collection of notes, remarks, or observations.
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...
Behind The Scenes – Mighty Pax’s Misadventures: A Christmas Tail
Over two years ago, an idea popped into my head: To write and illustrate a children’s book inspired by my dog Pax. I temporarily dropped the idea (being in the midst of my fourth rewrite of a trilogy…which I am now starting from scratch. Again.), until Pax lost the use of his hind legs. The pain and trials he went through, before and after surgery, made my heart...
To AI or not to AI?
Before I delve into this topic, I would like to preface this piece by stating that Artificial Intelligence isn’t actually a robot with super intelligence that could pretty much be a human, except with limbs of steel and wires. AI doesn’t create anything new (it’s essentially a massive program that detects and replicates trends and patterns, regurgitating results...