Writing, authors, interviews, writing tips, and writing prompts from the West Coast of the USA.

Welcome to West Coast Writers Blog wherever you're from!

Creative writing thoughts and schemes from a book author who enjoys both fiction and nonfiction, with a little poetry thrown in.Thoughts about writing a book, interviews with book authors and other writers, writing prompts, and thoughts about the writing life crop up here.In January, I participate in a River of Small Stones project, and in February, I run Alphabetaphilia on this site.See the pdf below for some of the great sentences produced in this year’s Alphabetaphilia. I'd love to hear your thoughts, and you can post as "anonymous" if you like, no need to register. I moderate comments, but I'm usually fast in posting what you've commented. I'm the author of memoir Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling, available through Amazon.com. View a free sample below the postings on this blog.

Writing Prompts

MEANING. Think of three insights you've had from people close to you, relatives or not. Choose your favorite one of the three, and write the first two paragraphs of a story based upon it. Someday, finish the story.

DORMANT VOLCANO. There are many places where volcanos are quiet, brooding. Now they are dormant but someday they can awaken and blow magma and ash into the sky. I remember Mt. St. Helens went from a quiet, snow-capped mountain to an inferno in about 24 hours or so. Write about someone who is caught in the transition.

HOLE IN THE CLOUDS. My husband's blog talks about his sensing a hole in the clouds, here: http://michael-walkingwiththespirit.blogspot.com/2012/02/hole-in-sky.html , That made me think about times when the clouds did something that transfixed me. Think about a time the clouds were amazing. Describe the clouds and also the scene, where you were, with whom, any conversation.

STRAWBERRIES. A friend put a great picture of a single strawberry on her blog. It reminded me of Gayle Brandeis's exercise where she passed out berries, one each, and asked us to do a sensory exploration of our berry. It was delicious in so many ways, the little dimpled seeds, glossy red flesh, fresh berry scent, soft silky feel, and taste---yum. Try that yourself. It's better even than it sounds. Then write about all the sensory overload.

TASTE. Starting with brushing your teeth, try to describe each thing you taste for a half an hour in words as exact as possible. Imagine you are obsessive about taste, and don't let your awardeness slip off the tip of the tongue.

Small Stones Badge

Nanowrimo

Nanowrimo

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Dangerous Voices of the Fiction Writer

One of my MFA classes has provided a lot of food for thought this semester on the subject of voice. I've thought of voice as your unique sweet spot, the writing position that you and only you can take and from which your best work will come. But in this class, we've discussed fiction writers who position their narrator in a different, non-self place with every book, and think of themselves as writing from a new position with each novel. I've worked so hard on finding MY place this idea is almost shocking to me.

The up-side of the shock is liberation. I hate the idea, espoused by some, including the "teacher" I once had at the Mendocino Writer's Conference, that you have to avoid writing in the voice of an oppressed minority person. The implication that as a writer, you only can feel and imagine what YOU would feel and experience based on your own life, is a straight-jacket to creativity. Write what you know, stick to that: no, I don't want to be that writer. I love reading Susan Straight, Gayle Brandeis, Madison Smartt Bell, and others who have respectfully imagined their way into someone else's life. I love the risk, the danger, but the reward in understanding from imagining that different life.

Still, the idea of putting on a new viewpoint with every new work is challenging. I hope to rise to the occasion, though, since I would like to create work out of ultimate empathy: writing as if I'm another person, out of different experiences of humanity that I can imagine.

Hi Sherry,Yes, and I was not the only one she called down for writing in a non-self voice. It was very awkward since I'd paid for advice that she refused to give. But it's all in the experience, and I can perhaps write about her someday!cheers,Laura

Just think what dull books we'd write - and what dull books we'd have to read - if authors only wrote about characters who are demographically like them. Hmmm. Maybe that's where some of the world's awful books come from.

About Me

A professor of molecular biology turned creative writer, Laura writes short fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for magazines, anthologies, and newspapers, has a memoir, Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling, published in 2011, and has two novels and a biography of Two Women of the RNA World in progress. She received a Certificate in Creative Writing with Distinction in June, 2009 from UCLA and is halfway through the MFA in fiction at SDSU.