The Woman with the Spanner
Category Archives: Writing
Writing Prompt – Priestess
Baal
Yes, that’s Lana Turner playing pagan priestess to a horned guy wielding a golden snake and a spiked club.
It does not get more pagan than this.
The movie is “The Prodigal“, from 1955 – sort of an apocryphal take on the Gospel parable.
Pulp Gospel, if you like.
I’m currently using this picture as photo reference for a story I’m writing – I hope it inspires you too!
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Photo Reference
I normally collect a lot of photo references when I write.
Internet is great (Pinterest is great!)
I fill whole folders, whole CDs of images – places, buildings, clothes, animals and plants, tools, jewels, weapons, old illustrations of beasts and creatures… and of course, faces.
Finding the right face for my characters helps me feel more precisely the way they speak, act, move.
Gives them a sort of mass, of reality.
Of course, one has to allow for some maneuvering space.
It’s hard to find the perfect face – and looking for it might be time consuming and futile.
And yet, sometimes one finds a face that’s absolutely perfect.
Like… like this…
I was absolutely awed by this face.
This is indeed the perfect face for my character, Amunet, in my Aculeo & Amunet stories.
This beautiful lady is a model, and her name is Idda van Munster (Aida Dapo).
I’m posting this image here as a tribute to her beauty, and a sign of gratitude for being of inspiration for my work.
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Writing Prompt – Where did he come from?
Today’s prompt is not a true prompt – more a general source of inspiration.
It’s the back cover of an old collection of stories by Harlan Ellison.
Read it.
Be inspired.
Dealing with plain hostility
As many friends of mine know, I collect books about writing – handbooks, critical collections, author memoirs.
I’ve been through close to 100 volumes on the subject of “writing” – and while not a single one of them holds “the Truth”, there is not a single one of them that did not teach me something.
Which is cool.
And yet…
A classic chapter in almost every writing handbook is something called “Dealing with rejection” – an essential set of “rules” for those bad days when a letter or a mail comes telling us that our story sucks.
Boy, it’s useful – because our stories do suck, sometimes.
What I find sorely missing is a chapter about “Dealing with plain hostility” – a set of rules for those bad days when someone decides to slam us, basically to vent their own frustration and make somebody else miserable. Continue reading
Writing Prompt – Ruins
From a Distance
Something different, for the first prompt of the year – a digital image I actually used as visual reference for the next Aculeo & Amunet story.
As it usually happens, I start with some image references and then my story and my description go in quite a different direction, but it is all right this way, I guess.
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Sagging in the Middle
I wrote a short story, a new Aculeo & Amunet adventure, over the weekend.
It was fast and rough – I outlined it on a copybook while my brother drove me 80 kms to Turin on Saturday morning, I jotted down additional notes on the way back, checked my facts before dinner, and then wrote the first third after dinner on saturday night.
Yesterday I went and hammered out the rest.
8000 words story, nice and smooth.
Sort of.
Fact is, my story sagged in the middle.
I had a strong start, a big wham-bang! ending, but the middle was highly unsatisfactory. Continue reading
Karavansara 