Conlang—constructed language—is today’s topic for A Drift of Quills. Do we make up our own languages for our books? How? If not, why not?
Category Archives: A Drift of Quills
A Drift of Quills: Fiction Shots (Department of Stories)
A Drift of Quills: Fiction Shots (Department of Stories) — We’re doing it again: one picture, three authors, little bitty writing space.
A Drift of Quills: Book Spine Poetry Redux
Welcome to A Drift of Quills, and today’s fun topic of “Book Spine Poetry.” This form of literature is pretty simple, and we’re excited about simple this month. Book spine poetry is a kind of “found” art. First, you need books. Start with one or two that spark your interest. As you stack them up, swap them around until they create a poem or a poetic “story.” The limitations encourage creativity, and we love creativity! My taste in poetry is questionable. I gravitate toward freeform (usually only my own—how arrogant!), the unusual (sample below), or limericks and “revised” song lyrics […]
A Drift of Quills: Authors vs. the Dire One-Star Review
Face it—nobody likes a one-star review, whether we’re authors, parents, employees, or anything else. Today A Drift of Quills discusses how they feel about those zingers. Are one-star reviews ever helpful? The more I thought about this particular can of worms, the more I wanted to put a lid on it! Yes, people have the right to express their opinion. No, it’s not always kind, helpful, or even necessary. Yes, the person under the glaring light of criticism might learn something valuable. No, that doesn’t give Everyone Else the right or the duty to shred someone’s work to pieces. Did […]
A Drift of Quills: What’s Our Inspiration?
Writers and other creative people have many different approaches to beginning their projects. Today A Drift of Quills are talking about what inspires us to write our stories. They’re near and dear to our hearts, and writing a novel is an extraordinarily personal experience!
A Drift of Quills: Bookish Gift Ideas
Who better to come up with some nifty bookish gift ideas than A Drift of Quills? We’ve tracked down some of the coolest, funkiest, interesting ideas for your Christmas (or otherwise) gifting…
A Drift of Quills: Picture This (#4)
It’s time to “Picture This!” Every first Friday of the month, A Drift of Quills gets together to chat about reading and/or writing. Writers often collect images to help them envision people, places, and things as they write. For this feature we’re sharing pictures and snippets about one of our works, giving you a sneak peek into our worlds!
A Drift of Quills: Flash! (Department of Stories)
We’ve put our heads together and come up with a flash of inspiration. Fiction! One picture, three authors. Writing to a random theme is challenging. So is keeping the tale to a particular word count…
A Drift of Quills: Books We Love #8
A Drift of Quills adheres firmly to the adage that you can never have (or read) too many books. “I add ‘Read Books’ to my to-do list every day so I know I’ll get at least one thing done.” Here we are again, reading and sharing our finds in another installment of Books We Love… This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through one of those links it won’t cost you a cent, but I’ll get a small affiliate commission, which helps keep my computer running. Thanks! I really love chatting with my readers, and in […]
A Drift of Quills: Muse (Department of Music)
A Drift of Quills are talking to the Head Muse (Department of Music) to find out what—if anything—helps promote the mood to write or inspire scenes, moods, or any other parts of our imagination. What kind of tunes do you think we listen to? We share a lot of things in common; is music one of them?