Literary Elly May

Speculative Fictionist. Ink-slave. Kinemortophobe.

Posts tagged creative writing

2,411 notes &

Writing requires discipline, but disciplined writers are not necessarily prolific. Most good work gets produced over time, sometimes many years, allowing the writer to grow with the material, to allow her world, her command over craft, and her psychological maturity to coalesce at just the right moment to produce something of value. This process often involves dreadful periods of not writing, or, worse, periods of writing very badly, embarrassingly badly. As time passes in a writing life, the writer learns not to fear these arid periods. The words come back eventually. That’s the real discipline: to train the mind and heart into believing that words come back.
…
Be willing to wait. In the meantime, write when you don’t feel like it. If you can’t write, read.

Monica Wood, The Pocket Muse (masculine pronouns changed to feminine)

I needed to hear this today.

(via savetheteaboy)

And again today.

(via one-bite-at-a-time)

(See also: the Law of Undulations)

(Source: rosy-blur, via melmione)

Filed under writing advice creative writing fiction

119,546 notes &

1.
I say, ‘I am fat.’
He says ‘No, you are beautiful.’
I wonder why I cannot be both.
He kisses me
hard.

2.
My college theater professor once told me
that despite my talent,
I would never be cast as a romantic lead.
We do plays that involve singing animals
and children with the ability to fly,
but apparently no one
has enough willing suspension of disbelief
to go with anyone loving a fat girl.
I daydream regularly
about fucking my boyfriend vigorously on his front lawn.

3.
On the mornings I do not feel pretty,
while he is still asleep,
I sit on the floor and check the pockets of his skinny jeans for motive,
for a punchline,
for other girls’ phone numbers.

4.
When we hold hands in public,
I wonder if he notices the looks —
like he is handling a parade balloon on a crowded sidewalk;
if he notices that my hands are now made of rope.

5.
Dear Cosmo: Fuck you.
I will not take sex tips from you
on how to please a man you think I do not deserve.

6.
He tells me he loves me with the lights on.

7.
I can cup his hip bone in my hand,
feel his ribs without pressing very hard at all.
He does not believe me when I tell him he is beautiful.
Sometimes I fear the day he does will be the day he leaves.

8.
The cute hipster girl at the coffee shop
assumes we are just friends
and flirts over the counter.
I spend the next two weeks
mentally replacing myself with her
in all of our photographs.
When I admit this to him
we spend the evening taking new photos together.
He will not let me delete a single one of them.

9.
The phrase “Big girls need love too” can die in a fire.
Fucking me does not require an asterisk.
Loving me is not a fetish.
Finding me beautiful is not a novelty.
I am not a fucking novelty.

10.
I say, ‘I am fat.’
He says, ‘No. You are so much more’,
and kisses me
hard.

Rachel Wiley  (via ungracefully)

This always moves me, not matter how often I see it. And I am always caught with surprised laughter at the line “The phrase ‘Big girls need love too’ can die in a fire.” :)

(Source: sweetdeltablues, via stilletcheduponhisface)

Filed under rachel wiley poetry poem creative writing

1 note &

Trying to decide which story idea to work on

At first I was like, “Yay! Now I have my writing time back to myself! Now to figure out which story to work on first.”

image

Then it was, “I know, I’ll just read through my story idea notes to see which one jumps out at me…”

image

image

But…ALL of them jump out at me. Which means 

THE POSSIBILITIES

image

ARE

image

ENDLESS!

image

Obviously endless options really leaves me with only one option

Disney Animated Gif on Giphy

Filed under what+to+do writing fiction stories creative writing

596 notes &

motivation for moving beyond your writing habits: Using Music to Focus Your Writing

jrlbennett:

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” 

― Aldous Huxley, Music At Night: And Other Essays

There are writers who can only work with the blinds shut and the door closed (ideally out in the middle of the woods in a secluded cabin); there are also writers who need to work in coffee shops with the hustle and bustle of the surroundings to ground them. Writing seems to either be crafted in a void, with an absence of sound or movement, or accompanied by a meticulous soundtrack. Different types of thinking and work require various levels of concentration and focus. Music can help focus and drive your work or it can be pure distraction. 

I prefer do my creative writing in silence. If I decide to play music there is a small, but strict, criteria: it needs to be instrumental and (preferably) from a game or movie soundtrack. At work it’s the opposite, I can easily focus and be productive while listening to almost anything. Everyone has different reactions to playing music while working. 

If you enjoy writing with some sort of mood music to spur you on, a good way to sort out what works best is to look for songs with certain beats per minute (“BPM”).  There are activities that can be enhanced by using specific BPM playlists. For example, when doing cardio exercise the best  BPM should be between 120-140. This stands to reason that writing, a much more relaxing activity than jazzercise would require a much lower BPM. 

Like my music criteria above, everyone has little habits that they turn to when working.  When writing, my boyfriend uses Groovesalad  to put him into a more disciplined mindset; when programming, he listens to music with a higher BPM which lends to quicker thinking and problem solving. Some people do their best work while listening to high BPM songs since it forces them to match the tempo of the music. The key is to find what suits your writing style best. 

I started using online radios or listening to full soundtracks because I found myself wasting hours crafting a “perfect writing playlist” instead of actually writing. Having someone else plan a playlist for me took away hours of searching for the “perfect” inspiration to write the next scene.

Below are some online options to start you off. This is in no way a full list of what is available, just examples of what I have used in the past. There are tons of paid online music programs you can use like Spotify, LastFM,Bandcamp or Rdio, but I tend to rely on alternate free versions whenever possible. 

Full-Length Online Soundtracks (YouTube only)

Game Soundtracks

Film/TV Soundtracks

Free Online Listening

The best thing about online radio stations is that not only are there stations organized by musical genre, there are also stations that have playlists dedicated to certain moods or activities. For example, Songza has a parent music directory called Activities which is filled with sub-directories like ‘Barbecuing’, ‘Cocktail Party’, or ‘Reading in a Coffee Shop’ that are further broken down into applicable playlists.

Accuradio

Radio Rivendell - online all Fantasy-based music station

Somafm

Songza

How to Calculate BPM

iTunes has its own BPM calculator which will need to be turned on. There is a New York Times advice column on how to turn on BPM tracking in iTunes. As with everything else, there is a WikiHow on How to Calculate the BPM of a Song. 

There are programs you can download that will categorize the BPM of your music:

Often the easiest thing to do is to choose a playlist or album that matches the genre you’re writing or the scene you’re setting. For my novel, when I turned on music, I steadily switched between the Jane Eyre, Skyfall andGame of Thrones soundtracks. My older, smaller writing pieces were written exclusively to Sarah Mclachlan or Loreena McKennitt (McLachlan’sFumbling Towards Ecstasy was my go-to inspiration CD- it’s terribly melodramatic). 

Try listening to different genres and BPM to see what helps put you into a creative mindset. You might find you get your best writing done with dubstep blasting in the background (I doubt it, but who knows). Use different online radio features or find some full-length albums on YouTube  If you find something you love then consider buying the CD or donating to the upkeep of the websites. You might even find a shifting upward or downward BPM playlist to be the most effective.

Further Reading:

ARGH! Sherlock soundtrack is my new writing soundtrack. LOVE THIS LIST!

(via melmione)

Filed under writing fiction creative writing sherlock soundtracks