Creativity Workshop « Natasha Alexander

National Novel Writing Month: Whodunit?

I’m thinking about November and National Novel Writing Month. (Who reading this blog isn’t?)

Last year I started NaNoWriMo with a page or two of scribbled notes and little else. Now, almost a year later, I’ve still got an unfinished draft with some decent characters and snazzy scenes, as well as a bunch of dead ends [Continue reading]

CW -- the final stretch

The Creativity Workshop is coming to an official end – and this is where those graduation speech sentiments come into play: the end of something meaningful, but more importantly, the launch pad for something newer, more exciting, bigger. blah blah blah.

Well, yeah…

I belong to a women’s group that meets monthly on the Tuesday night [Continue reading]

CW -- Where was/am I, anyway?

So where am I with my Creativity Workshop goals, my One Story Per Week plan? I’ve already admitted that I didn’t write a single word during my vacation. My bad. But I do have a couple of semi-stories in the hopper from my ‘Breaking the rules/breaking the law’ segment — again, more [Continue reading]

Who am I today?

I write likeMargaret Atwood

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

This was fun. Thanks to the fabulous Merrilee of Creativity Workshop fame for sharing the I Write Like link. Of course, I tried it with three different writing samples and came up with:
J.D. Salinger
Margaret Atwood
Stephen [Continue reading]

CW - Two weeks of Diabolical Thinking

So how am I doing with the Creativity Workshop? It’s been almost two weeks since my last CW post, and I’ve barely posted anything else, either. What happened?

Stagefright. Yup, I had stagefright. My blogging buddies seemed SO eager (thanks for the vote of confidence!) to follow my foray into the diabolical [Continue reading]

CW -- Sunday -- er, Tuesday -- update

How am I doing with the Creativity Workshop, you ask?

I have two stories-in-progress from the first section of the workshop. I posted snippets of the second story ideas in these Flash Fictions — here and here — and the blog comments (thanks, everyone!) reinforced my thinking that this story could move in [Continue reading]

Friday Flash Fiction 55

This builds on last week’s Friday Flash Fiction:

Barbara looked at her daughter. How could she tell her? Oh, Kirsten, by the way, I’ve been living a lie in front of you and Dad all these years?

She winced at the false notion of ‘Dad’ that her husband, her daughter held. What possible [Continue reading]

CW - Update on goals & progress

So where am I along my Creativity Workshop path? According to the original plan, I should be starting my last of four stories centering around a specific place and time: post-Hurricane Ike Galveston Texas. Am I there?

Nah. I realized during my week in Texas that there was Absolutely No Time [Continue reading]

Friday Flash Fiction

This one came out of a short conversation I had with an airline seatmate last week. She’d slept most of the flight, and I only got to talk with her after the plane actually landed. She was in her late 20′s, probably, and she’d just come from visiting her sister, who was a couple of [Continue reading]

CW - Hindsight: week in review

That’s the first tattoo my son ever got. Hindsight — right there between his shoulder blades in crisp blue letters. Forever.

I guess my post title, then, is more or less in honor of Mother’s Day…. (Go find a Mom to hug if you haven’t already!)

So, hindsight — looking back over this first week of [Continue reading]