What makes Strong Writing?

 Try focusing on strong verbs rather than adverbs or adjectives. Also, drop the TO BE verbs, as described on this page here.

Verbs, are the edge of your writing. That all said, here are some tools and thoughts to help you on your way.

Wake Wizards! November is Coming!

Wake...

...you shamans, you storytellers, you wizards who have created this world. Sleep no more.

Do you remember who you are? Do you recall your power? You and I, we have created Gods, and have frozen oceans. We filled jungles far and wide with beasts of great wisdom and terror.

We have conjured suns, and pulled moons from their orbits. We have snapped the cables suspending Heaven, just to hear the enraged coiling spiral and whine across the sky. We have bathed in moonlight, consumed star-shine, and washed the world clean with rain.

Do you remember? On our off days we created kings, crowned their heads, then removed those heads with guillotines -- just as and exercise, *a proof of concept* (... told you I could do it with cake, the next round is on you).

And when the God we created became unworthy, we made madmen of its followers, then executed the God.

Have you forgotten Lilith? Asheara? The poets of Sumer?

I can still hear their language in your laughter. You were always the one worthy of sitting beneath the Bodhi tree, with your pen twisting your hair as you composed the phrases, the namshuk, the stories that created dynasties, religions and nations. 

But you have slept too long, and the namshuks need to be rewritten. War is on the world, tearing the fabric of their lives apart, flaying the hope from their souls, and the skin from their bodies.

Wake

The Golden Verses Of The Stoic

Seneca and Epictetus refer to the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, which happens to provide a good framework for developing a daily routine, bookended by morning and evening contemplative practices.

Zeno of Citium, who founded Stoicism in 301 BC, expressed his doctrines in notoriously terse arguments and concise maxims.  However, Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school, wrote over 700 books fleshing these ideas out and adding complex arguments to support them. 

Bringing it To Your Story

I just came from a conversation which brought up a peeve of mine. This Be a good reader, to be a good writer. I want to assure you, that if you don't know what you are looking for, you're not going to suddenly recognize it from reading. Not from any author worthy of study. Because right now, you don't know enough to ask the question -- which isn't a slight. Not at all. Here are couple of examples of techniques being used which are going to slip under the radar. But maybe they will spark enough in your writer's mind to figure out a few others.

Kaizen and the Art of Improvement

The Japanese method of Kaizen, literally translating as 'good change', is a proven method for helping people to change their behavior. Rather than requiring you to do anything drastic, the emphasis is on changing habits in very incremental steps.

"Kaizen (improvement), shukanka – these are all things that are taken for granted. But they have the power to transform your life, and simplify aspects of it in the process. It's not about getting things perfect, or setting unrealistic standards for yourself.

Where is my Voice: Poems

1.

From the umbra into starfire

Pale as a new fashioned corn;

Light as the lava with the air,

twists shadow to tear; moon drop

The angels' shrieks with heavy delight

Laid her on these crystalline hands

2.

I am the moon and the air,

the wind before peaceable calm.

My breath, politely ferrous, cool,

frozen in the south.

This space, my soul, empty,

where lingering moments lurch,

and smile their moist, precious smirks,

holds me fast underground

3.

umber coffee bitter as amber

somber as fading embers

huddled in the ambry umbrosed

with umbrageous needs yet unseen:

magni nominis umbra

4.

The umbra is a blast shadow

a halo of dark flame trimmed

to a welder's blade.

Her hand flicks and then holds fast

casting a black spear past her form

at the speed of dark, throws her

voice into the void, hiding the moon

inside a folded corona of zodiacal light

5.

Our world afire you laughed

tossed your pale hair over the breach

sued the wind to rise and spread our ash

across streets and houses like snow across the dead