Mynx Writes

SARK isn't exactly a Muse, but she puts mine to shame. When I was a teenager, I found this poster by SARK in a Toronto mall and immediately fell in love.  I took it home, gave it a place of honor on my bedroom wall, and made it a point to read it from start to finish at least once a day. Some of the best advice I've ever received for fostering my personal creativity came from "How to be an Artist", and to this day, the words remain with me, even though the poster has long since disappeared. If I could, I would take every single bit of advice in this poster and turn it into one of the 12 Steps For Fostering Your Creativity this weekend. However, rest assured that you don't need to stop at the 12 steps listed here today.  Find your own copy of this poster, frame it up, and hang it in your writing space - and don't be afraid to open yourself up to being the creative creature that you are. Are we ready, then?  Grab a notebook and a pen or open up a fr...

Writing and blogging is an addiction. Admit it - if you write or blog - you are addicted to it.  It's your drug of choice, and you'd probably give up breathing before you put away your pen and paper or your laptop and bid adieu to the Internet forever. This is also the only addiction (that I know of), that you should want to become better at. With that in mind, every Friday for the year of 2012 I'm bringing you the Mynx Writes Weekend Workshop.  Consider it your own personal 12 Step Program for the weekend. Starting next Friday, with each Weekend Workshop I will tackle a different subject related to your addiction, including: 12 steps to overcoming writer's block 12 steps to putting off procrastination  12 steps for brainstorming 12 steps for fostering your creativity 12 steps for creating believable characters 12 steps for building a better blog 12 steps for social networking for writers and bloggers 12 steps for world building Becoming a Grammar...

Copyright 2011, Marie Patchen The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth. Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same. And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost, 1915 Put yourself into the picture. Where do these two paths lead? If you had a choice, which path would you take, and why?  Why are you standing here, having to make this dec...

Like athletes, writers must train.  We all have tips, tricks, and resources to get our creativity flowing. I have a few favorite resources that I like to go to to inspire me.  One is a book,  "Journal to the Soul" by Rose Offner, and it is filled with many inspiring exercises to get you writing, such as the following exercise: The task? Write about your life or a piece of your life that you don't understand and would like to. Write it as a fairy tale or a short story. Include an obstacle that has yet to be overcome, an encounter that has significance, the gift you received, or the lesson learned, and how you came to triumph in the end. The  following is my response, originally written long hand, in green ink, in a hard bound journal with unlined pages on September 7, 2002: Once upon a time.... It was told that there was a little girl, who for various and mysterious reasons, became trapped within the body of a wicked and hideous witch. Now, this was no o...

One thing about being a writer -- the greatest advice that we all have received is simple enough. Write what you know. How easy this seems at first. Sit down. Start vomiting words onto the page or onto the computer. Eventually, you will have a work of genius, because, as the saying goes, if you give x number of monkeys typewriters and x number of years to pound away on them, they will produce the collected works of Shakespeare. Right? Maybe.... Me, myself, am a firm believer in the writer within, so when faced with as simple a writing exercise as the one that inspired my previous blog post , I went with it. The mission? Write for ten minutes, non-stop, using the phrase "I remember". Keyword? NON-STOP. If you get hung up, start over. Keep going until you've exhausted all avenues. I don't care if you remember what color t-shirt your 4th grade bus driver was wearing. Write it all down. The point of this exercise is to get your thoughts moving. ...