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The Storytelling Cat – or, OK, I Lied

February 19, 2024

art, book, creativity, fiction, literature, novel, writing

Last December I said I’d likely never write another novel. And what did I start doing before a month had passed? Writing another novel. Never say never and all that. The story of how this novel, The Storytelling Cat, came to be would make for an interesting essay on creativity and art in itself.

Later in this post I’ll explain more about the creation process, together with info on how to get the novel – a free download is of course available – but for now there’s something intriguing you should know: This book is unlike any other I’ve written; there’s a lot of peculiarity involved.

That the protagonist is a cat with human knowledge is the least odd thing about this book.

The storytelling cat book cover — The cover of *The Storytelling Cat* is one of my favorites (of my own books, that is), though I’m not objective. You see, I painted it myself!

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Shape-shifting in Nimona: Metaphor and the Subconscious

February 12, 2024

Fiction, Writing

creativity, criticism, fiction, imagination, LGBT, social masses, society, symbolism, writing

3 comments

Nimona is an animated film based on the graphic novel by ND Stevenson. It features “a girl” (more of this in a while) who can shape-shift into any form, from whales to gorillas and from little boys to emulating other people. As I explore in this post, shape-shifting in Nimona is a metaphor that reveals something about the role of the subconscious in the creative process.

You see, there are some metadata you need to know – if you aren’t familiar with ND Stevenson already: The first one is that he identifies as transmasculine/bigender. The second, that Stevenson was apparently unaware about his gender identity before Nimona:

There are times in my life where I feel like everybody knew what my deal was before I did, and this is one of them. But it would be years before I started to see that in myself. I guess I planted the seeds without realizing.
Time

Is that really possible? Can an author create such strong symbolism – as shape-shifting is for gender identity – without consciously realizing it? We know that books often write themselves, but as we’ll see in this post, symbolism is even more powerful, its focus more sharp, when it comes to subconscious meanings.

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Writing Flash Fiction on the Fly

January 1, 2024

Fiction

creativity, fiction, imagination, writing

4 comments

Today’s post is the result of a challenge I decided to give myself: What would happen if I gave myself a writing prompt and 15 minutes’ time to produce something? The task is even more challenging considering writing flash fiction is something I discovered relatively recently.

I’ve of course written tons of text in general – including short stories and even a similar kind of challenge – but this is a rather unique situation. As I said, writing flash fiction is something I’ve done less – and certainly not under pressure. But it’s important to get out of our comfort zone and try new things.

Here’s the methodology I decided to follow for this flash fiction challenge:

Prepare the post structure and metadata (headings, post category, etc.)
Write the introduction to this post (what you’re reading right now).
Use my Storytelling Dice to give myself a writing prompt. Note: At first I thought I’d just use the first generated image, but I then decided to generate a few, until I’d get something intriguing.
Start the clock, and start writing a flash fiction story!
Check for/correct minor typos.
Add a concluding section with the “how it felt” part.

I’m about to start “rolling the dice” and then I’ll start writing. The story begins under the image below – which is the writing prompt I got from the storytelling dice (I plan to add it after I finish writing). Let’s see how this goes!

writing flash fiction — If you want to try Storytelling Dice yourself, feel free

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