Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Letting It Come To You - Bruce Boston - Biggest 'Ah-Ha!' Moments in Writing

     I’ve had a few revelatory “AHA!” moments regarding life, but with regard to writing they tend to be smaller “aha!” moments and always connected to a particular work I’m in the middle of, most often fiction, but on occasion with a poem.

     I’m stuck on a particular scene and its just not playing right. The action or dialogue is off, a character is behaving out of character for no good reason, there’s just something there that is not working no matter how many tries I make at rewriting it. So I put it away for the moment and work on something else, a different part of the story, or another piece entirely. And then I’m eating dinner, or watching a movie, or drifting off to sleep, or driving, anything that seemingly has nothing to do with writing –- and suddenly “aha!” and the solution pops into my head and I see how to make it work. Often this even seems to happen in the middle of the night while I’m sleeping -- call it a dream “aha!” that I don’t even know I’ve had until I wake up in the morning and discover myself thinking about it first thing and the answer is there.

     Without such “aha!” moments I think I’d be a much poorer writer with far fewer finished and accomplished works.






Taken from Bruce Boston's website: "My poetry and fiction have appeared in hundreds of publications, including Asimov's SF, Amazing Stories, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, The Pedestal Magazine, The Twilight Zone Magazine, Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, and the Nebula Awards Showcase. I've won the Bram Stoker Award for poetry, the Asimov's Readers' Award for poetry, the Rhysling Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and the Balticon Poetry Award, each a record number of times. I've also received a Pushcart Prize for Fiction and the Grandmaster Award of the SFPA. I hold the distinctions of having appeared in more issues of Asimov's SF than any other author, and of coining the word "cybertext."




When asked if there was a book he recommended for beginning poets, Bruce had this to say: No single book I'm aware of that I can recommend about writing poetry, but for a collection of first-rate examples of genre poetry, mostly free verse, you might check out The Alchemy of Stars. http://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Stars-Rhysling-Winners-Showcase/dp/0809511622/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368883644&sr=1-1&keywords=The+alchemy+of+stars

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