Have you seen the cooking show where they give three contestants baskets containing the same ingredients and they get three very different dishes? It always amazes me.

Writers have more ingredients than would fit in a normal picnic basket. The Oxford English Dictionary reports there are 171,476 words in current use, 47,156 obsolete words, and another 9,500 derivative words. That means billions and billions of potential combinations.

What are you cooking up today?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

I would take this one step further and say don’t think about your readers, don’t think about other writers, and don’t think about your inner critic. Close your mind to external forces, the naysayers, the prophets of doom. Gag the voice in your head telling you, you are not good enough, your story not clever enough, your word choice not descriptive enough. Push them from your writing space and lock the door. Immerse yourself in your story, live your story, write the story only you can write.

Eventually, you can unlock the door, but today, write.

What are the demons that impede your writing?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

I don’t have much to add today except to say this is an insightful comment by a brilliant man. Authors are magicians and books are magic.

Isn’t it wonderful to discover that humans really are capable of “working magic”?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

We are all unique and traveling different paths, but there are threads that connect us, make us human. The love of a parent, a bond with a pet, the struggle to live, the sense of loneliness, and a myriad of other events and emotions touch us all. We do not have to train and work every day to know the joy athlete experiences when he wins his event or feels the defeat when he loses.

What fragments are you including your writing?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

If you take Neil’s quote one step further, you could say the short story is the Rodney Dangerfield of the literary world. “I don’t get no respect!” his catchphrase laments. Agents and publishing houses tend to shun short stories, but you can’t keep a good story down. There appears to be a growing popularity of the form, fueled perhaps, by our busy 21st-century lives. I enjoy the short story’s versatility and its ability to accommodate the desires of the writer. Besides, I have a soft spot for the underdog.

Do you use the short story format in your writing?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

Writing transports me much the same way as reading. The worlds are equally real. The difference between reading and writing is, in reading, I am a passenger; the author does the driving. Where I might turn left, the author turns right. When I write, I am in the driver’s seat. Hands on the wheel, I create destiny from unlimited possibilities.

There are reasons for reading and for writing, but given a choice, I prefer to drive.

Does your writing world feel real to you?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

I am amazed at how many boxes I just ticked. Type fast? Check. Pale skin? Check. Speak in strange tongues? Yep, some I don’t even understand, especially when I am tired. Drink coffee? Oh yeah, by the potful, morning, noon and night. Sunlight? What is that? I’m also a little disturbed by the similarities between writer and vampire. Perhaps we are cousins, both looking for the road to immortality.

How did you do on this little test?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

My grandmother was a great proponent of hand washing. It was a refrain often heard emanating from her kitchen. She wanted children to be clean.  I object to the idea that writing is something shameful. But there can be an air of contempt and disbelief when you reveal you are a writer. I admit I am cautious when I first divulge my propensity for writing.

How do you present your writing? Do you proclaim it from the mountaintops, or hide a dirty little secret?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

Someone recently asked me where I get my story ideas. Truth is, I don’t know. I sometimes fall asleep thinking “I need an idea”. That’s it. I wake with an idea or an entire story in my mind. The trick is to capture them, write them down before they fade from existence. There are magic idea elves working overtime to plop those little gems in my head.

How do you get your ideas?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

Today I am dealing with a long list of short story ideas. Which do I pick? Which will make the best story? What if I start and realize it really wants to be a novel?  Ah, decisions, decisions.

Do you find yourself not knowing which idea to select?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer