Go to a public place, like a coffee shop or a garden. Eavesdrop on people’s conversations. Takes notes or sketch and when you have an idea, write the person’s story (even if it’s just a snapshot moment). You can also do this around your own home if you live with any people or even pets.…
“…and it fell out with me, as it falls with so cast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep it.” -Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Did you know that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (technically Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) is a short story? A novella, at best? The version I read (a trade paperback volume by Signet Classics containing an introduction by Stephen King and also Dracula and Frankenstein) runs to 75 pages. Which makes this…
I have started to do some regular posts in order to 1) beef up the posts on The Starving Artist and 2) be more clear about what The Starving Artist is. One of these regular posts is “The Artist Recommends,” which will be posted before seasons, holidays, sometimes months or new years… Just to give…
I do not prefer the epistolary form, and I am wary about having two authors on a book cover, as well, so The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Anne Barrows had two knocks against it from the beginning. But I had liked the movie. So one knock for.…
Finally, a Neil Gaiman book that really agrees with me. Everyone else seems to admire his work so assiduously, but me… it either wasn’t my flavor (American Gods) or I thought it was not very good (The Ocean at the End of the Lane). While I had no idea what was coming to me with…
This is a book for writers. I suppose it could also be a book for readers, especially those in the academic, literary criticism vein. At any rate, it had been zinging across my path like a ping pong ball, for something like a year, as every writer around me read it and talked about it…
I went into Shadow and Bone with very high expectations. Written after Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows series but meant to be a prequel of sorts (though including none of the same characters), I figured this would be at least as good as Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom (the duology). I was a little…
the starving artist 