generating story ideas

Visit Adventures in Writing to read my post about ways to generate story ideas.

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will finish this darn story

By Wednesday. It’s a short story, entitled “The Watcher.”
Yes, I’m still “blocked.” But I’m finishing it anyway, even if it’s terrible in the end. Because really, it’s time to move on.
One thing about the current protagonist is that he reminds me of the protagonist of a story I wrote previously. Not the characterization, since they are drawn very differently, [...]

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the dream-story

Last Saturday I wrote a post about dreams over at Adventures in Writing. I was wondering whether dreams are ever a valuable source of inspiration or ideas for writers of fiction. This post was prompted by a dream I’d had the day before, which I thought (and still think) might be the seed of a short story.
Well, I haven’t written this story. Not [...]

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in a rut with Marie and Fred

One of the recurrent difficulties I’m having just now is the inability to solve old narrative problems in new ways. My brain is strangely resistant to coming up with new answers to problems I have already answered.
It goes like this:
Maybe I’ll write a scene where Marie encounters her arch-nemesis Fred at the bank where she works [...]

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trusting the creative process

I want to write a short story this week. Just because I want to. Yes, I know – the novel should be my priority, and maybe working on another project is really just a form of work-avoidance. Maybe, maybe. But I’m doing it anyway.
I have half-a-story in mind for this project, but I don’t have an ending. [...]

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where my ideas come from

Many (though not all) of the ideas for my fiction originate as a visual image in my imagination of a single character. These images are emotionally compelling, and I usually feel that I want to discover and tell the story of this character.
For example, the image of an elderly man, standing outside, looking nostagically [...]

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