First off, sorry for the lack of a post last week! With so much going on, it may happen here and there during the winter but my goal is to keep on the weekly schedule. Now onto this week's post... December - daylight fades before dinner, snowflakes make people forget how to drive, and families... Continue Reading →
Poetry
As a bit of a companion to the series I just wrapped up, I wanted to touch on poetry in general as it can come in many different lengths. For now, I'm addressing it in a single entry as I don't play in the poetry sandbox all that often. Off the hop, let me say... Continue Reading →
Story Lengths – Novel
To conclude this mini-series, today's entry is on the novel! To the world at large, this length is quintessential storytelling. For myself, I've held to the word count of novels as anything 40,000 words and up. These can also get long, real long! War and Peace, for example, clocks in north of 500,000 words and... Continue Reading →
Story Lengths – Novella
Next up in this mini-series is my personal favourite to read - the novella length! So here's where lines start to become very blurred, word count wise. A general consensus amongst many sources would say novellas are roughly 10,000 to 40,000 words but I've seen all manners of numbers cited. "Wait Chris, what's between a... Continue Reading →
A Published Story and new URL
Breaking tradition from my weekly posts with two site updates. The first is that Osprey, a post-apocalyptic short story, has been published at Ash Tales! It is truly gratifying to see some of my work on a site that I've been reading for a little while now. There is a great collection of work on... Continue Reading →
Story Lengths – Short
For this week's entry of the story length mini-series, I'll be touching on my experience with short stories! This length is very popular for quite a few reasons. First off, they have so much flexibility to them. With a 1000 - 6000 word count range for most publishers, the possibilities are endless as to what... Continue Reading →
Story Lengths – Flash
Since it's been fun (while hopefully not too boring) for me to provide thoughts on the many aspects of creative writing, I thought I'd attempt story lengths next. This mini-series will describe the word count of each category that I adhere to when completing a story. As well, I'll take some time to describe how... Continue Reading →
Writer’s Block
After providing some thoughts on inspiration last week, it felt was only natural to touch on the essential opposite this week. Writer's block has definitely been the subject of a thousand blog posts by others in the past so I won't be providing any revelatory redefinition of it here. The way I've always viewed writer's... Continue Reading →
Inspiration
In talking with other writers, inspiration and ideas for stories seems to be a rather intimidating thing. There always seems to be a reverence for that person who says that it came them in their sleep or that they were just compelled to spill out 10,000 words in a single sitting. Its the part of... Continue Reading →
Journaling
Dear Diary, When I began taking classes on creative writing, one of the first pieces of advice I received was to begin the practice of journaling. Our instructor said, "Just start writing and see what comes out." She would also refer often to Natalie Goldberg's described methods of journaling in 'Writing Down the Bones'. It... Continue Reading →
See Preston Write 