66 Experiments by Charles Bernstein. Category: Writing Techniques 1. Homolinguistic translation: Take a poem (someone else's, then your own) and translate it "English to English" by substituting word for word, phrase for phrase, line for line, or "free" translation as response to each phrase or sentence. Or translate the poem into another literary style or a different diction, for example into a slang or vernacular. Do several different types of homolinguistic translation of a single source poem. (Cf.Six Fillious by bp nichol, Steve McCaffery, Robert Fillious, George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Dieter Roth, which also included translation of the poem to French and German.) Chaining: try this with a group, sending the poem on for "translation" from person to another until you get back to the first author. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.
Make Your Own Book, Create a Book Online, Custom Books. Writerisms and other Sins: A Writer’s Shortcut to Stronger Writing.
List of Journal Ideas. 201 Ways to Arouse Your Creativity. Arouse your creativity Electric flesh-arrows … traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm. ~ Anais Nin Creativity is like sex. I know, I know. The people I speak of are writers. Below, I’ve exposed some of their secret tips, methods, and techniques. Now, lie back, relax and take pleasure in these 201 provocative ways to arouse your creativity. Great hacks from Merlin Mann of 43 Folders. 25 Insights on Becoming a Better Writer. When George Plimpton asked Ernest Hemingway what the best training for an aspiring writer would be in a 1954 interview, Hem replied, “Let’s say that he should go out and hang himself because he finds that writing well is impossibly difficult.
Then he should be cut down without mercy and forced by his own self to write as well as he can for the rest of his life. At least he will have the story of the hanging to commence with.” Today, writing well is more important than ever. Far from being the province of a select few as it was in Hemingway’s day, writing is a daily occupation for all of us — in email, on blogs, and through social media. It is also a primary means for documenting, communicating, and refining our ideas. As essayist, programmer, and investor Paul Graham has written, “Writing doesn’t just communicate ideas; it generates them. If you’re bad at writing and don’t like to do it, you’ll miss out on most of the ideas writing would have generated.” 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
10 Laws of Productivity. You might think that creatives as diverse as Internet entrepreneur Jack Dorsey, industrial design firm Studio 7.5, and bestselling Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami would have little in common. In fact, the tenets that guide how they – and exceptionally productive creatives across the board – make ideas happen are incredibly similar. Here are 10 laws of productivity we’ve consistently observed among serial idea executors: 1.
Break the seal of hesitation. A bias toward action is the most common trait we’ve found across the hundreds of creative professionals and entrepreneurs we’ve interviewed. While preparing properly as you start a new project is certainly valuable, it’s also easy to lose yourself in planning (and dreaming) indefinitely. 2. When our ideas are still in our head, we tend to think big, blue sky concepts. 3. Trial and error is an essential part of any creative’s life. To avoid ‘blue sky paralysis,’ pare your idea down to a small, immediately executable concept. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.