I am interested in writing formulas, but I know others look down on them. I believe that formulas can help writers be more creative. A while back I read an article on-line, no idea where now, about formulas. The author was very anti-formula. He talked about Michael Moorcock’s ” how to write a novel in… Read Article →
Latest Posts Under: Ideas
I’ve had an interest in conspiracy theories for a long time, even though I am very sceptical about them in general. I’ve been tempted to create my own conspiracy theory for fun and profit. I’ve hesitated to do that because I was afraid that people might take it seriously. Years ago I got interested in… Read Article →
They say that reading is part of writing, so I think I can count some of my recent reading as work on “Felix”. I’ve read a bunch of stuff about Lovecraft and ancient astronauts recently, which is something touched on in my story. Pseudoscience When I first learnt of Erich von Däniken’s “Chariots of the… Read Article →
Much of the humour in the comic strip “Dilbert” is based on one of the characters demonstrating ignorance without being aware of their ignorance. This behaviour has a name, The Dunning–Kruger Effect, and in real life it makes my blood boil. What is The Dunning–Kruger Effect? “… ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”… Read Article →
Lately, while procrastinating about “Felix”, I’ve thought about some old ideas that I could use to create new stories. One of these is what I call Virtual Parliament, where electronic communication is used to change the way parliament works. One of the problems with governing a large country like Canada, is that members of parliament… Read Article →
As I continue to struggle with writer’s block, I ask myself, why do I want to write “Felix”? Maybe that will get me restarted. On one level a story can be just a story; an exercise in entertainment. But to write a story a writer needs motivation. What is my motivation? In general I see… Read Article →
Conflict is an important part of story telling. Fortunately for the writer, there is no shortage of conflict to draw from. Recent reports about plans to evaluate teachers illustrates one of the conflicts I had in my work in transportation planning. Conflict in Transportation Planning For much of my career in Transportation Planning I advocated… Read Article →
I got back to work on “Felix” this week. My approach now is to go back over the themes of the story and the characters to clarify what I want to say. I planned to talk about that in my blog this week, but I wasn’t sure how much I want to reveal. In the… Read Article →
It bothers me that over the years I’ve abandoned many of the projects I’ve started. I try to find a way to see abandonment is a more positive light. I’ve found it quite hard to make any progress on my current projects, specifically my short story “Felix” and my movie “The Barrier”. I made no… Read Article →
I haven’t done much writing, or rewriting lately, but I did read a lot. I have some thoughts about my reading. I took the title of this post from some very common advice to writers. I picked it up in Pierre Berton’s book “The Joy of Writing”. What Kind of Reading? I don’t think anyone… Read Article →
