The Oasis of Literature

The past couple weeks I've been trying an exploration exercise entitled Ten Things, where whatever room you are in, whatever you may be doing, you look around and you note ten different things about the room you are sitting in. I will only share a handful of my lists, to give you an idea, but this exercise is to help you keep your eyes out for what's interesting. 10 Things-Blackbox: 1. Black curtains around the outskirts of the room. 2. Overhead walkways - could this be for crew or observers? 3. Stadium seating on one side of the room, metal stands -who sits there? 4. Onlookers 5. Group being watched 6. The teacher's horn 7. Skateboard hidden under the risers 8. Young students, older teacher 9. A language you can't understand (Improv game, Lost in Translation) 10, Old tape on the floor There are several things you can do with this information. What came to my mind is a group of young scientists being lead by an older gentleman, as they observe and note th...

How do you find inspiration? There are several different ways people find inspiration, whether it just comes to them when they're walking to class or work, or they wait hours and hours, digging through endless scraps of writing prompts, hoping to find something worthy of being immortalized. The rare 'immortalized'-worthy pieces are so few and far between that we end up having nothing to write about, or that's what we think. Inspiration can be found anywhere at anytime-while walking, watching a movie, fishing, or anything-and we can find it if we look for it. The problem is, we sometimes forget to look, or don't know how to look. We're always told to look, but how? What we need to do, is learn how to be an explorer. To explore what's around us: the world, and everything in it. But there are some rules in being an explorer. Looking We must be looking, looking at everything and everyone, noticing what we're walking on and who's surrounding us...

A writer's mind is a busy one, full of concepts, ideas, characters, settings, worlds, words, and it all just turns into a mesh of stuff with no place to put it-or so it seems. We have notebooks and notebooks full of different writings, ideas, and other such bits and pieces, that it's sometimes hard to keep it all straight. There is an alternative though. If you can create a single writer's notebook. Of course, this is hard to do with all the stuff that goes on in your head, and you can do it with a regular notebook, but I suggest using a three ring binder. My own writer's notebook is a two or three inch three ring binder, though you don't have to get one so large, and when I first made it I just stuffed it full of lots and lots of paper, unwritten lined paper, but it felt so empty, like I was missing something. So I got thinking, what is a writer's notebook? What's the whole purpose of it? There are many different reasons why you might want to create a wri...

Writing, creating, and finding new distractions. This about sums up a writer's work, and we all know where most of our time is spent. ;) Hey guys, sorry it's been a while, a not-so-good long while, but here I am again, and I'm here to bring life back to this blog. I will be starting up writing again, publishing at least once a week, so let's just jump right back in and get started! -The Word Nerd