Punning Walrus began as an inside joke, the details of which probably don’t interest you. Suffice to say, however, that Mr Walrus shares a lot of qualities with his creator, yours truly: He is endlessly critical, linguistically self-aware, and intelligent – being modest though isn’t one of his strongest points.
Mr Walrus spends his time annoying others, being perennially grumpy yet ultimately good-hearted. But doublecross him and he’ll murder you – with words.
Punning Walrus, a wise-ass as critical, linguistically aware, intelligent and modest (cough, cough) as his creator(more…)
Are there “kinds of imagination”? It would seem all imagination is, if not the same, at least “good”. “Imagination is all I want from you” an 80s song goes – yes, I’m getting old – and with only minimal… imagination, we can totally picture a writer looking in the mirror and whispering these magic words.
After all, it would seem impossible to write without imagination, since it refers to our ability to form ideas, have thoughts, or even experience emotions that, though perhaps inspired by our environment, are not directly available to our senses.
For example, when you see a red car brightly reflecting the afternoon sunshine and it triggers a memory from your childhood, that’s imagination. Indeed, if you can “see” a red car reflecting the sun while you’re reading these lines, that’s imagination too!
However, imagination is a tricky concept. Because of its abstract nature, imagination can come in various forms – as perhaps you noticed already in the few paragraphs above. For instance, it takes one kind of imagination to watch a film and then write a review about it, and entirely another to create a modern art installation.
The key issue, then, is to be able to recognize these forms imagination takes, and take advantage of them according to the needs of our writing. As I will show you in this post, we could think of three kinds of imagination – creative, productive, and reproductive – each with its own patterns and applications.
This image “doesn’t exist” in that it’s not a real photo; it’s made with Bing Image Creator. However, it also makes me imagine a multitude of things, because it’s anchored in childhood images – which also reveals the power of AI for writers, in ways they don’t quite realize! (more…)
Reading negative criticism – worse still: mere ratings – about something you made isn’t easy. Few people want to hear they’ve failed (though failure is an intriguing concept), and writers are no exception. An author who has spent endless hours and effort writing a book understandably feels dejected reading “I didn’t like it”. Is there a way for a writer to be immune to criticism?
The answer is yes, otherwise (self-evidently) this post wouldn’t exist. However, there are a couple of caveats we need to get out of the way:
A writer can be immune to criticism, but this does nothing for the criticism itself. In other words, what an author has control over is their own reaction. What others feel reading that piece of criticism, or whether any shortcomings the criticism describes are valid or not is beyond the scope of the post.
As a term, immunity might connote total defense. However, since we’re dealing with psychological reactions and strategies, immunity is very subjective and also not quantifiable. In other words, to become, as a writer, immune to criticism doesn’t necessarily mean you will be 100% carefree and not care about it.
And so, with this in mind, in this post I’ll share with you some strategies so you, as a writer, can become immune to criticism. As I said, these strategies are psychological and describe your own reaction toward any criticism.
Do it like cats! They aren’t deterred by criticism, and they even pretend whatever it is they’re criticized for was part of the plan anyway(more…)
