In this brief and brilliant excerpt from a series of talks about writing for television (recorded at Ithaca College circa 1972, according to the FAQ at RodSerling.com), Twilight Zone and Night Gallery creator Rod Serling talks about the source of creative ideas. In doing so, he manages to pack more intellectually and creatively stimulating goodness…
Category: Writing & Creativity
Let your subject find you, and other rules for writers
Everybody has seen those lists of rules that writers sometimes come up with for advising others on how to perform the literary art and craft. Mark Twain famously embedded some real writing advice in his mostly snarky/facetious identification of “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.” George Orwell’s offered five rules for writers in “Politics and the English…
The wisdom of waiting
In a super essay at FT.com (“Waiting Game,” June 22), Frank Partnoy, law and finance professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, delves into the psychology and physiology of optimum performance among professional athletes to draw out a profound insight about the supreme value of waiting. This value, he says, isn’t just…
Writers: Inhabit your delusions, embrace your freakishness
Longreads — my favorite online portal to high-quality longform writing — invited me to be their “featured Longreader” for the June 8 edition of their weekly newsletter. Here’s what I sent them: My favorite longread of the week is A Psychotronic Childhood, by Colson Whitehead, in The New Yorker. Whitehead and I grew up right…
The secret to working with a daemonic muse: Get out of the way
I just published a new post at Demon Muse about the proper way of working with your invisible daemonic partner. Here’s an excerpt: The central point or insight of daemonic creativity can be stated in various ways, but one of the most potent is to say that when weâre pursuing creative work â whether that…
Freeing the muse with morning writing: A concrete example
In my Course in Demonic Creativity, and also in its expansion as a print book that I’m currently shopping around under the title Daemonic Creativity: A Guide to the Inner Genius, and also in an article at my Demon Muse blog, I talk about accessing the daemonic muse via the practice of morning writing. It’s…
Free ebook: A Course in Demonic Creativity
My ebook about daimonic creativity for writers is now available for free download. A Course in Demonic Creativity: A Writer’s Guide to the Inner Genius clocks in at 40,000 words and 174 pages, and is optimized for reading on a Kindle, Nook, iPad, or other ereader. Or you can of course read it on your…
The muse and the pineal gland
For over a month I’ve been pounding away at the third installment in my “Theology, Psychology, Neurology” series of articles over at Demon Muse. It will look at the third element in the series title by considering several possible biological locations of the muse experience. The section on the pineal gland proved unexpectedly slippery to…
The Zen of Prose Style: Writing can’t be taught (but it can be learned)
Recently, I quoted a jewel of sardonic wisdom from Joseph Epstein on what it takes to become a writer. His words were from seven years ago. In a review essay published just this month, he ups the ante for quotability: After thirty years of teaching a university course in something called advanced prose style, my…
What it really takes to become a writer
Recently, as I was doing some research for my Demon Muse blog, I came across an essay by Joseph Epstein that begins with an audacious statement of what it really takes to become a writer. Although the overall point of the essay is to criticize a book I love (Alice Flaherty’s The Midnight Disease: The…