Home For Fiction – Blog

for thinking people

Put Some Heart in your Writing

August 8, 2022

Writing

guest post, Igor Livramento, literature, writing

Today’s post – “Put Some Heart in Your Writing” – is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English. You can also find him on LinkedIn.

Despite the title, I am not talking about the organ that pumps blood through the body. It is a metaphor. I am talking about injecting blood in your text – again I commit a metaphor. It is about writing something captivating, moving, instigating. “Captivating” is another metaphor – a literary text is not a kidnapper to hold someone captive.

Although language brings these metaphors to which the metaphorical status we remain deaf (call this forgetting catachresis), do not think that writing literature is all about making clever metaphors.

heart writing
Putting some heart in your writing isn’t as simple as it might initially appear. It involves paradoxes and conflicts with much of what people (naively) call “writing”
(more…)

Authors Talk: Mikhaeyla Kopievsky

August 1, 2022

Author Interview, Literature

art, Gothic, interview, post-apocalyptic, postcolonialism

Another “Authors Talk” post. You can think of it as an author interview and, indeed, that is the name of the blog category. However, I prefer to see it as a friendly chat between fellow authors. Today I’m having this virtual discussion with Mikhaeyla Kopievsky, author of Tasmanian Gothic. A list of useful links to Mikhaeyla’s work can be found at the end of this post.

Tasmanian Gothic, Mikhaeyla Kopievsky
Tasmanian Gothic, by Mikhaeyla Kopievsky
(more…)

Behind the Scenes of Writing a Short Story

July 25, 2022

Criticism, Writing

creativity, criticism, fiction, literature, writing

With this post, I’ll do something pretty different. I’ll offer you a “behind the scenes” look, focusing on the intricacies behind writing a short story. But there’s more: In order to do that, I will use one of my short stories – indeed, one that I’ve posted on the blog before.

I’m of course referring to “1992”, which I shared with you some time ago – here are part I and part II. I’m offering this look into “what goes on in an author’s mind” from the unique perspective of being the author as well as someone with the academic expertise to use it as teaching material.

How did I come up with the idea? What does it mean on a personal level? Who is the protagonist? Why? What? How? Plenty of literary lessons awaiting!

writing a short story
Short stories are often minimalist. The behind the scenes, then, of writing a short story is about revealing some details that are inherently not to be disclosed – I’m doing it for teaching purposes, obviously
(more…)