In my last post, I was preparing to describe the content of that "good and all-giving" Pandora's Box that I had discovered upon opening an email from the SCBWI organization of which I am a member. So here goes . . .
The SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) email contained a link to a video posted by an upcoming speaker at their next regional event. The sad thing is that I don't even remember which video I watched that day! But it whetted my appetite to keep searching on that YouTube link for more of the same. Dozens of similar videos appeared in a cascading stack to the right of the one that had first snagged me. I was hooked!!
That first video was about methods and techniques to improve novel writing skills. Forgive me for not listing these following video descriptions in any significant order (as viewed or in importance) but I had accidentally discovered the mother's lode of story-crafting resources. On the decade-old, second-hand Mac computer screen glowing before me, I watched - mesmerized into a near catatonic state by the magnitude of information I was viewing - video after amazing video. There were numerous TED lectures from the geniuses at Pixar and Disney, successfully published authors and screenwriters describing their techniques, high school and college literature lecturers and university professors giving valuable writing tips, and even everyman-point-of-view amateurs with extraordinary insights into the novel-writing craft.
I felt like an information addict; I couldn't get enough! I scribbled notes on papers as fast as I could, not knowing at first the sheer quantity of pertinent videos that I had stumbled upon. It was extraordinarily endless! Before long I had too many pieces of paper to keep track of. I was inundated with staggering amounts of incredible novel-writing factoids. I had to stop and figure out a method for cataloging all of it into a meaningful, accessible resource for my writing project.
My next post will describe some of the content that I discovered and what I did to make it useable. Don't forget to check back again soon!
The SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) email contained a link to a video posted by an upcoming speaker at their next regional event. The sad thing is that I don't even remember which video I watched that day! But it whetted my appetite to keep searching on that YouTube link for more of the same. Dozens of similar videos appeared in a cascading stack to the right of the one that had first snagged me. I was hooked!!
That first video was about methods and techniques to improve novel writing skills. Forgive me for not listing these following video descriptions in any significant order (as viewed or in importance) but I had accidentally discovered the mother's lode of story-crafting resources. On the decade-old, second-hand Mac computer screen glowing before me, I watched - mesmerized into a near catatonic state by the magnitude of information I was viewing - video after amazing video. There were numerous TED lectures from the geniuses at Pixar and Disney, successfully published authors and screenwriters describing their techniques, high school and college literature lecturers and university professors giving valuable writing tips, and even everyman-point-of-view amateurs with extraordinary insights into the novel-writing craft.
I felt like an information addict; I couldn't get enough! I scribbled notes on papers as fast as I could, not knowing at first the sheer quantity of pertinent videos that I had stumbled upon. It was extraordinarily endless! Before long I had too many pieces of paper to keep track of. I was inundated with staggering amounts of incredible novel-writing factoids. I had to stop and figure out a method for cataloging all of it into a meaningful, accessible resource for my writing project.
My next post will describe some of the content that I discovered and what I did to make it useable. Don't forget to check back again soon!
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