At the first annual Iceland Writers Retreat, I got to take two workshops from Pulitzer prize-winning writer Geraldine Brooks. For each workshop, she asked us to bring a short piece of writing to introduce ourselves. Because “travel” was the loose theme of the retreat, one of the options was to write 300 words about your favorite place. Here is mine. Read More
ByGD
I Can’t Commit
ByGD
October by the Numbers
photo by gratisography.com
Time for another round of blog statistics! Read on for links to the most popular posts of the month and a list of intriguing search terms that led readers down this Crooked Road. Read More
ByGD
Halloween “Fictian”
As an adult, I’m pretty new to writing fiction. But I wrote a lot when I was kid. Here is a story I wrote in first or second grade. Above the picture it says: Gemma Alexander fictian
Below the picture is the story: Read More
ByGD
Reykjavik Writing Jam
I took a Reykjavík city break last weekend without ever leaving Seattle, thanks to the Taste of Iceland event sponsored by Iceland Naturally and KEXP (among others). After visiting the Odin’s Eye exhibit at the Nordic Heritage Museum, the next item on my itinerary was the Reykjavik Writing Jam. Read More
ByGD
Seattle Writes with a Little Help from my Friends
My computer is littered with false starts. Somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 words of fiction, I run out of steam, run out of ideas, fall into a plot hole, and don’t know how to continue. So my stories sit, unfinished and abandoned in a folder on my laptop. Last Friday I made it all the way to 16,000 words before I realized I had no idea where I was going. I closed my laptop in disappointment and that night I went to bed a failure.
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