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Week 10 Lab

For this week's StoryLab, I decided to explore Jon Winokur's Advice to Writers site. Below is a list of some of the advice that stuck out to me:

  1. "I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?" - Toni Morrison
  2. "A character should explore the world and herself. And I'm only following her. I ask a lot of questions. A character gets up in the morning and looks at herself in the mirror. What does she see? Herself or someone else? When you put characters into these moments that are extremely private, they will show you something." - Yiyun Li
  3. "I had a teacher who would say, 'Keep it on the body.' For him that meant every sensation should stay tied to the corporeal experience, but also, at the sentence level, every metaphor, every simile should do so as well. This makes so much sense to me. Why compare something rust-colored to a brick when you could compare it to a spleen? Why put a plane in the sku when you could put a floater on the back of someone's eyeball? Doing it that way builds bodies and worlds simultaneously." -Kimberley King Parsons


(Toni Morrison)


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