Writer Unboxed

Surfing the best of the writers’ blogs so you don’t have to.
For our non-American readers, the upcoming weekend is known as Labor Day, where the working stiff gets an extra day off on the boss’ dime to drink lots more beer and eat foods loaded with nitrates. But we writers will be furiously plugging away […]

Longtime reader Thea McGinnis certainly found music in language when she composed this paragraph of WU beloved words. We had to share this, taken from the comments section of the previous post:
Gloamy Cleome woke up discombobulated. The sound of jazz music playing outside her window caused her to undulate beneath the light summer coverlet. A […]

A friend recently sent me a note along with a quote. “This is you,” she said, and the quote was this:
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make. ~Truman Capote
She’s right; I love the sound of words. And I love finding new ones, like […]

Yesterday, Therese blogged about kicking herself in the butt and entering Writer’s Boot Camp. She had that vague pit-sinking feeling you get when you’ve been frittering away time instead of working on the wip.
I, on the other hand, have the opposite problem. Creature of habit that I am, I get up most every day […]

I am the Queen of Excuses, I’ll fess up. The kids have been home for the summer…I’ve had a lot of freelance work…My mother was ill, and she and her dog stayed with us and our puppy for a while (Oh, you can’t imagine)…I haven’t found a stretch of time to get into the zone….My […]

Translating foreign works is a tricky business, and not just because the magic of a foreign author’s work must be lovingly preserved. In part two of our interview with Anthea Bell, we learn more about how she works, the challenges she faces when language itself becomes a barrier, and which recently translated books she feels […]

Sheesh, I don’t check a blog for a week or so, and I miss something big. Over at the stellar Flogging the Quill, Ray has what he terms “a modest proposal” but is really a killer deal: an online storytelling workshop. Folks, if you have a WIP you’d like honest feedback on …. and […]

Yar! Yesterday Therese and I dished about the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We agreed that the plot was preposterous, but that we didn’t care because we loved the humor and the characters. We continue our discussion below.
KB: Let’s talk about that last scene in DMC, the one where Captain Barbossa shows up crunching […]

This summer, Therese and I let our brain cells take a break to go see the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Our writers’ minds got to working on how director Gore Verbinski and crew took a classic genre movie, updated it, and made this unlikely story a box-office juggernaut. Therese and I loved the […]

I’m turning into a hack. That’s right: this morning I outsmarted Blogger. First by uploading an old template when our old one “failed” (not showing anything of our site but the first three posts), then figuring out how to link to a picture outside of Blogger without actually using Blogger’s wildly temperamental upload software (which […]

Cornelia Funke’s children’s books are the very definition of enchanting. Whether you’re considering her works for younger children (e.g. Dragon Rider) or older ones (e.g. Inkheart, Inkspell), her storylines are unique and absorbing. But it’s her voice that we find particularly noteworthy for all its fluid grace, its hint of poetry. So what a shocker […]

Continuing with our theme of bizarre art this week, I thought a little Kafka would get us in the mood for linky goodness. But first…
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Melly’s finally coming home now that the […]