Just the other day, I filled half a page with a brand new story idea, one that interweaves sacrifice and loyalty, action and inaction, what we owe ourselves vs what we owe each other, with a little – or rather a lot – of magic on top. Last week I wrote two short stories out of the blue and the week before that I figured out how to fix a…
Today we are talking about creativity and how to get some. Here’s a fun factoid: one of the most interesting things regarding the question of where creativity comes from is where it doesn’t come from. Research indicates that when people are allowed to improvise, the region of the brain associated with planning, inhibition, and self-censorship deactivates itself. That’s correct, writers! In order to do your job well, you must allow…
Something horrible happened to me the day I became an author: I stopped being a writer. I spent six years working on THE LOST GIRLS. It was the great pleasure of my life, second only to raising my children. Each morning I woke up and immediately started figuring out how I could avoid as many of my obligations as possible so I could spend more time writing. Days when I…
Though this week’s topic is how to keep writing when we don’t have time, I have a theory: 95% of the time, “I don’t have time” really means “I’m procrastinating” or “I’m burnt out.” I’ve been there too many times to count. And I’ve gotten out of it in traditional and not-so-traditional ways. 1. Change things up and write by hand. I write the majority of my drafts on a…
I write during my lunch hour, so when I sit down to write, I’m also often sitting down to eat. At the same time, my inner critic is tucking into a hearty meal of all my hopes and dreams. That’s how it feels, anyway. Pasta for me, and a nice big helping of total evisceration of my self-confidence for my friend, here. You might think that having a book coming…
The other morning I was out walking my dog and saw my breath in the cool air. Later the same day, it was an unseemly eighty degrees. Chicago hasn’t decided what season it is yet, but I can tell you what time of the year it is for me: Word Count Nuclear Winter. Every year at about this time, my writing habit drops through the basement. That’s because twice a…
My biggest surprise during Surprise Week here at The Deb Ball was that I couldn’t think of anything to write. SURPRISE! Deb Amy has writer’s block! I usually think of a surprise as something wonderful and unexpected. I’ve received many lovely surprise gifts. Flowers, an iPad, a card or letter from a friend. Emails from friends I haven’t heard from in a long time are always welcome and special surprises. …
This is my Writer’s Block. I received it as a gift, when I was just starting out in TV. I was a Writers’ Assistant on Saved by the Bell: The New Class, which meant my job was to sit in the room with all the Writers, type up their thoughts and ideas, input their changes into the scripts as they gang-rewrote them, then make sure everything was formatted properly so…
