This is like planting a garden and watering it. Get your materials and put them in a handy place in your bedroom. Start writing something small, four lines maybe, not a book or anything. This is just a playground for ideas.
Creative and Memoir Writing Class (yes, even during a break)
Many of you know that two months ago I fell on the treadmill and broke my kneecap. Really smart maneuver! Consequently, my writing corner, set up in the family room, was transferred to a corner of the dining room.
Good Morning Writers!
OK, enough of that. You all have four weeks with no writing class, but I hope you take some of that time to read. And to read closely. Jeff Goins puts it this way in his online article Why Writers Need to Read if They Want to Be Good:
Getting Your Story Off and Running!
Here it means the inciting incident happened not long before you opened that first page and now the adventure or drama is on.
Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
Carol Brennan King March 8, 2022 This week we discussed some of the business sides of writing and promoting. Therefore, because I want to leave you with helpful resources, I am going to pass on to you some comprehensive websites I have found useful. We talked first about the path to publication with the tools…Read more Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
Creative and Memoir Writing Class Notes March 2, 2022 by Carol Brennan King
We must consider the people who share or impacted our story and how our writing about them impacts them. We can hurt feelings. Does that matter? Do we have enough distance to be rational about what happened?
Classes Start This Week
January 29, 2022 from the desk of Carol Brennan King Long time, no ??? See doesn’t work, or maybe it does. It has been a log time since you have seen me here. That does not mean that I have stopped caring about our writing community. I have been taking classes – the most recent…Read more Classes Start This Week
Resurrecting Leaving Ireland
December 12, 2021 Carol Brennan King After months of feeling blocked, I have picked up the story of my great-great-grandparents and their journey to Bradford County in Pennsylvania in 1848. The working title of my book is Leaving Ireland, and I think 2122 might be the year it is finished. Today we went up to…Read more Resurrecting Leaving Ireland
Creative Writing: Fiction and Memoir
Secondly, the first character the reader usually meets is the protagonist, the main character, and you must show the reader things about this person that makes them want to know more. Is she sobbing at her desk? Is he running down the street? Is he in a fight? Or on the phone?
Creative Writing and Memoir Writing September 15, 2021
Welcome Back! from Carol Brennan King It has been a while since we have been together and it was great to see you in person and via Zoom. In person people - please note that you can bring your laptop or tablet to class, and set it to zoom so that you can see the…Read more Creative Writing and Memoir Writing September 15, 2021
Creative Writing and Memoir Writing Class Notes
Carol Brennan King July 7, 2021 Prompt for next week: Write something around the word vacation. Think school, holiday, family, short or long vacations, accidental vacations (a snow day) or intentional and planned vacations. The example that I am sharing here may seem a long way off from vacation, but I was on my vacation…Read more Creative Writing and Memoir Writing Class Notes
Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
Today was devoted primarily to putting some resources into your hands and then trusting you find them helpful.
Creative and Memoir Writing Class Notes
Instead of thinking, “I want my reader to feel sad,” I needed to show how I felt the day I learned another girl thought of my boyfriend as hers. I sat in his car outside my school and told him I would not play second fiddle to anyone, and I cried, ...
Creative Writing and Memoir Writing Class Notes March 31, 2021
Remember, however, that the story’s action and its characters are vehicles through which the reader creates her own emotional experience. AND the goal is not to get the readers to feel everything as the character does but to stimulate the reader to consider his or her own response.
Creative and Memoir Writing March 17, 2021
When you are writing memoirs, your job is to recreate dialogue, not create it. Sometimes, that means you cannot remember exactly what you said. In that situation, you can recreate it, getting as close as you can to what actually was said and what and how your character would have said it.
Creative Writing and Memoir/Nonfiction Writing Class Notes
March 10, 2021 Taught by Carol Brennan King Creative Writing: today we focused on using white space, lines, and punctuation as tools to help us communicate our stories. We also talked about how using breath units, or the words we want to be read in one breath, help us reach our reader to interpret the…Read more Creative Writing and Memoir/Nonfiction Writing Class Notes
7 Tips for Literary Fiction and Nonfiction Writers
The emphasis in on the character, his or her feelings, motivations, and interior life. A clear plot may exist but the interior life of the character is of as much importance as is the plot in importance.
Trying Something New in our Creative Writing and Memoir Classes
prompts can free our creativity, giving us opportunities to think about different words and how to use them in fresh ways. Then we talked about How to use prompts.
Digesting the Quarantine or Making Sense of the Quarantine
I have trouble praying that God would end the pandemic and end the political mess.
Creative Writing/Memoir Class Notes
It's important to note that guidelines may vary a little based on who you talk to or what you read, but by following the ones stated above, you will ensure sure that your manuscript looks clean, is easy to read and won't get rejected because of sloppy formatting.
Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
Give the person a deadline for when you need the manuscript back – if you are giving them the manuscript to them and not reading it to them. Give them a reminder a day or two before your due date. You might say, “I have worked out for Wednesday to be my manuscript workday, so I would appreciate what you have been able to do for me before Wednesday.
Creative Writing and Memoir Writing
Keep a journal for exploring how you feel about your writing, for writing exploratory short pieces, paragraphs, poetry, even as a portable tool to chase what comes to you when it comes to you. Then, if and when you want to, rewrite the entries in a much more polished book format,
Creative Writing and Memoir Writing
The point is that this is your writing space, your office as an author, and you and your body know that when you go to this place, it means work.
Creative Writing/ Memoir Class Notes
If you want to publish a book, you have to develop an audience to buy your book. You do that by building a platform - a tool you use to promote yourself and sell your writing. Your writing platform proves your ability as a writer to promote and sell your books.
Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
Nov. 4, 2020 Carol Brennan King Note class changes next week: Creative Writing will be from 9-11am and Memoir will be from 2-4pm. Assignments Creative Writing: We talked about seven emotions: joy, anger, worry, anxiety, sadness, fear, and fright. For next week, write a short piece that shows your character(s) experiencing emotions. The point is…Read more Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
Creative Writing/Memoir Class Notes October 7, 2020 by Carol Brennan King
Do you choose to make your point by developing one issue ata a time or do you put lots of "nuts" in there and let your reader sort them out? I am not sure readers like guessing.
Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
By creating intention, you allow the reader a perspective that pulls them deeper into the story. There must be yearning and desire
Listening to My Body 9/24/2020
Carol Brennan King An essay for a class I am taking: I lean into the room to hear, to find sounds to write about, but all I hear is the sound of air being sucked through a small floor fan then pushed through the room toward the dehumidifier. Ostensibly, they work together to circulate the…Read more Listening to My Body 9/24/2020
Creative Writing and Memoir Class Notes
Remember that people choose to look and act and do the things they do because it makes sense to them. You must know or find out why it makes sense to them.
Fall Writing Classes taught by Carol Brennan King
every writer should carry a small notebook in which to record anything curious that they hear or see on a given day. Think of these as story prompts you can use later.
My Foot Hurts and My Heart
Why offend someone even before they have an opportunity to meet our loving God?
Helps, this post is full of helps and inspirations!
I learned an important lesson checking one resource out. A loo, understood by some as the bathroom, didn't always mean that. An embarrassing mistake I almost made.
Hymns are Never Sung Alone
It came to me that we were with a chorus of believers singing through history, from what I thought then was the late nineteenth century, based on the language of the hymn.
Vacation, Only write what you cannot keep inside!
What I knew was that I loved writing. Or maybe I loved feeling and that made me want to write. I remember often the day that we took a ride into the mountains,
“Sit Still and Be Quiet”
So, if you have to “sit still and be quiet” a lot, what do you do? You think. You go places in your head. You rehearse past injustices (being honest here) and remembered or anticipated joys, depending on which holiday had just passed or was to come.
ADA LIMÓN said “I suppose anything is possible if you can eventually find a way out.” What do you think?
I remember standing in the dark room (that’s how I remember it that Christmas eve) pulling my pants off so I could slide into that mortifying gown that reveals more than it conceals. I remember standing there thinking, “This is not going to be fun
Getting Started as a Writer: My Way by Carol Brennan King
But I learned this, you can learn what I paid significant amounts of money to learn, by going to writers' conferences, joining writing groups, taking classes at the library. and hanging out around this part of my blog.
Editing Class 3, July 15, 2020
Honesty here: my weaknesses are so, then, that and just. Then seem to go with my tendency to write long-run-on sentences.
Self-Editing Class Notes Class 2 July 8, 2020
Read it out loud, and to an audience or person who if possible who will tell you the truth, not just say, “That was great.”
A Meditation: on Prayer July 2, 2020
I find this useful as a guide to help me pray, especially when I need God's help. Or honestly, a way to get started when my mind is full of distractions.
Things I wrote when no one was looking July 1, 2020
Ah, perhaps it might make tomorrow possible. But art makes tomorrow pleasurable, so it cannot be wrong and I must not feel guilty.
The Blessing That Came To Me
by Carol Brennan King June 19, 2020 I have been taking a Meditation and Writing Class this week and today the prompt was this: The ---------that came to me: The teacher said just fill it in anyway that makes sense for you. Perhaps words like person, idea, blessing....and honestly, I don't know what came after…Read more The Blessing That Came To Me
Building a Setting for your story or novel
The emphasis this week is the setting, likening it to building a house, and you can't do either one if you don't know what belongs where.
Meditation on My Body: Thankfulness
I feel my body growing tense so this must be important that I explore this because I am seeing a place of neglect.
Meditation and Writing Days 1 and 2
but they thought their own writing could not really matter because no one asked to hear it again. No one wanted to listen to the heart beating in every word.
Zoom Class: Writing a Scene
Real-time momentum means what happens, what is said, and how does the character interact with the setting and characters.
Great Storytelling
Now, once you explore why you feeling that way, consider how you can use that scenario to inform your story.
Continuing Your Stories
For instance: Susan ran down the stairs, her heels slowing her only a little, but she knew she had to get there before he did. She stepped out onto the shiny rain-washed streets, the restaurant and bar windows flashing neon red and blue streaks lighting the way to her car.
Creative and Memoire Writing Class
Our class this week was the last of our spring term. The summer term starts June 1, and in light of that, in today’s class, in addition to the reading of student work, we talked about a number of resources available either online or in book form. -
Creative and Nonfiction Class April 20, 2022
I believe that this material about the construction of good stories is equally important for memoir writing as fiction because a memoir is nothing more than one of many stories we have lived through.
1. General resources related to Ireland and the Irish people.
You might want to start by checking out BellaOnline -The Voice of Women. Don’t be misled by that address. It should take you to the home of that site and an interesting article on IRISH LIFE IN THE 1800’s.https://www.bellaonline.com/ Since many of the poor Irish of the period ended in the Workhouse or the Poorhouse,…Read more 1. General resources related to Ireland and the Irish people.
2. If you have Irish ancestors, you might enjoy the book I’ve written: Leaving Ireland. But for the moment, check this out:
Look around you. What would it be like if half of the people living in your state disappeared? That’s what happened in Ireland in the middle of the 1800’s. In Ireland before the famine of the late 1840’s, over eight million people called Ireland home. Then over a million people died of starvation and disease…Read more 2. If you have Irish ancestors, you might enjoy the book I’ve written: Leaving Ireland. But for the moment, check this out:
Creative Writing and Memoir Class March 16, 2022
You must build tension. Things must happen to and involving your key characters that put them at risk. The longer you can make that tension last or build new reasons for tension, the more un-put-downable will your story be.
Carol's Notes 