Author: Glenn

I’m listening to Mahler on Spotify. Randomly selected his 5th Symphony because it came up first.

I’m using it as background music while I’m working, but I started to wonder why I’ve never been a Mahler fan. I stop to pay more attention. It’s the middle of a movement and I probably should have started my attentiveness at the beginning, but I don’t hear classic melodies and development, not that I expected Beethoven, given Mahler’s late Romantic time frame. I hear motifs and fragments being varied and built on, like stream of consciousness writing or a particular style of jazz improvisation where the improvisor is focused on fragments and development. It’s coherent, with a string of logic, but I can’t make sense overall of it. As if someone is talking on and on in English but on a topic I have no experience with.

Continue reading “On Mahler, Google, and Romanticism”

My plan for my novel includes one primary inciting incident, followed by internal and external struggles, and ending with an opportunity for the protagonist to finish what was interrupted the first time.

Continue reading “Writing Each Subplot Separately”

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently published an article I wrote: “We Let Our Father Die”.

Continue reading “Me, on CBC”

Looking from inside the character or story and trying to see what’s next can be difficult. Trying to visualize what is going to happen or what needs to happen based on tensions and history and theme is a lot like method acting except that the author has no script to follow. And yet as a pantser this is what I try to do to forage ahead in a story. Continue reading “Cheating Writers’ Block: Getting the Story Un-Stuck by Seeing Outside the Box”

Here’s a unique site I keep in my writing bookmarks.

If you don’t keep typing it will erase what you’ve done. If you hesitate, the font turns reddish-brown and fuzzy but it returns to normal if you begin typing again. If you don’t start typing as it is becoming fuzzier, a popup blocks you from adding any more words.

Continue reading “Dangerous Writing App”

There a group of sites that I frequently use as thesaurus alternatives. They’re all created by the same person and use the same broad structure.

Continue reading “Thesaurus Alternatives”