VS Grenier ~ Award-Winning Author, Speaker & Podcaster

Brenda Ueland, author of If You Want to Write, said, "Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When people really listen to each other in a quiet, fascinated attention, the creative fountain inside each of us begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected wisdom." The most meaningful works -- books, paintings, sculptures, songs, crafts, a garden, anything -- are created by those who have learned the art of listening: listening to their hearts and to the hearts of others. It is when we listen that the most extraordinary seeds grow and become tangible. They become a motivating book, an awe-inspiring painting, a formidable sculpture, a most melodious song, a bouquet of breathtaking blooms. It is when we listen that we create tangible expressions of our compassion, understanding, love. It is when we listen that stories, poems or books begin percolating inside us. And it is when we listen that the unexpected wisdom and insights joyously leap in

Every good writer will always want to improve upon his or her work. Any good writer doesn't simply write for a living or want to write for a living; they want to write and love to write. What's better than loving what you do for a living! However, how can you get better? There are many methods that you can use and tips you can follow that can give you the edge when it comes to completing each and every piece of work. 1. Reread your existing work. The first step is to reread your own work. You may spot errors or areas that can be improved. This is unlikely if a deeper issue lurks underneath the surface, but surface errors are easy to spot. 2. Learn to critique your work. Critiquing your work is a good step to take if you want to improve because you can go through every piece that you have ever written and list areas of improvement for yourself rather than getting others involved. 3. Read articles that give you information on how to improve. There are many o

Be Yourself: Tips For Finding Your Own Writing Style As a writer, you have to have some sort of individuality in order to stand out from the crowd. If you look at all of the successful authors, you'll notice they all have their own distinctive writing style. Here are a few tips to help you find your own writing style. Keep a journal and an ideas book. Keeping a journal will allow you to write every day and give you a place to express yourself. Writing in a journal every day will help you find your own style as a result. You can use a number of techniques (stream of consciousness, question and answer, periodic reflection), in order to find the writing style that is perfect for you. In contrast, you can write down all ideas you have in your ideas book. If you take it with you wherever you go, you will soon fill it up. So whenever you need something good to write for an employer, you will have a ready bank of ideas there to tap into! Experiment every chance you ge

You may have thought from time to time that you’d like to keep a diary or a journal. You may even have started one...or two...or who knows how many, over the years. Perhaps you are one of those people with enough self-discipline to write briefly in a diary every evening, year after year, and start a new volume each New Year’s Day! In that case, you have a pretty good record of your doings and maybe even your thoughts about them over time.   There are, however, many possibilities for journaling using various "guided" techniques. To get you started, you may want to give some thought to what you want to get out of journaling. Do you just want to record your memories, as days and months go by? Then a normal diary, or journal, is probably just what you need -- that, and a pen. But if you want to get to know yourself better, find the source of some ongoing problem in your life, or give yourself a nudge toward doing some creative writing, then you might consider one

When dealing with fictional characters, it’s crucial to remember that real people rarely know themselves. We often don’t know our minds, we don’t understand why we’re doing some of the things we’re doing, and we cannot really access our subconscious. So what makes a fictional character believable and memorable at the same time? 3 Tips for Creating Believable Characters 1. Pay attention to the world around you Wherever you go, listen to people around you. People from all areas of the country make for interesting speech patterns and distinct dialects. Usually, the uniqueness of a character comes from the writer's ability to make it come to life. For instance, if you have a character from the Deep South, it is probably indicated to give that character a southern accent, so that you make it ring true. For a character to be believable, the character's voice has to be believable. Moreover, you will avoid a static story by using compelling dialogue. 2. Read your f

Instead of the usual article, here are 31 story sparkers you can try out over the next several days. Have fun! First Lines Use these to start your story. 1. It was a gift her mother gave her on her eighteenth birthday. 2. The door slammed with finality. 3. Alice tried to remember who had given her the key. Cliche Starters Use these cliches to spark a story. 4. burn the midnight oil 5. bed and board 6. an idle mind is the devil's playground 7. the raw end of the deal 8. keep your fingers crossed Random Story Words Use each set of words in your story. 9. lab instructor, computer, garden, spinach 10. painter, cooking oil, hallway, cake 11. prisoner, ruler, stairwell, running shoes 12. flight attendant, torn page, river, cookie jar 13. security guard, broccoli, kitchen, hat Quick Prompts Use these to jumpstart your writing. 14. Write about how a first kiss should feel like. 15. What do you usually do on Sunday? 16. Write about what you'd cook for an enem

Writer, write with passion. The kind of writing you produce shall oftentimes reflect the current state of your emotions. Be indifferent and your writing will be indifferent. Be cheerful and watch the words dance across your page. Whenever you sit down to write, put your heart and soul in it. Write with passion. Write as if you won't live tomorrow. Writer, write with purpose. Be goal-oriented. Do you write everyday with the purpose of getting published tomorrow? Writer, write with awareness. Be alert. Be observant. Extraordinary things happen to ordinary people. Your job as a writer is to capture as many of these things and write them down, weave stories, and create characters that jump out of the pages of your notebook. Don't let anything escape your writer's eye, not even the way the old man tries to subtly pick his nose or the way an old lady fluffs her hair in a diner. What you can't use today, you can use tomorrow so it is good to store these in

As writers, we write to be understood. To get our message across without any hitches. To express what we really mean in clear and un-vague terms. That's why we have to use precise words. And this is achieved by using accurate and expressive words. When someone asks you, "How are you?" What's your normal reply? You probably say, "I'm OK." OK, well, most of us tend to give a reply along that line. But the thing is, with that kind of reply, do you think the person who asked you will have a clear idea of how you really are? I mean, if someone sincerely wanted to know how you are, she would expect a clear answer. Let's face it, "OK" is a vague term. How OK are you exactly? OK as in really great? OK as in, "I'm getting by..."? OK as in "Gosh, I'm dying here!" Well, you get the picture. People tend to be lazy to express exactly what they mean. Words like, "OK," "Nice," "Fine,&

Whether you have lived a rough life or had a silver spoon in your mouth, it is normal to want to write your memoirs. This is especially true if you are getting up into middle age or beyond. Otherwise, it could be a pretty short story. Assuming you are ready to put 40 years or more down on paper, here are some tips for maximizing the effect of your finished work. First of all, give yourself plenty of time for a project like this. You are going to remember things as you work through the memories that are freshest in your mind. For this reason, it makes sense to give yourself lots of time, even as much as a year or more. Hopefully, you have a supply of old photographs you will be going through at the same time. But even if you don't, you can dig out those memories that are buried within. A good place to start is with a general time line of your life. You may find that you need to make more than one draft of this line, because you are likely to remember important

You're sitting at your desk, staring at a blank sheet of paper or a blank word document on the computer screen. You actually want to write, but just can't bring yourself to it. You have no clue what to do with your characters next, and they don't seem eager to tell you. Or perhaps you have a deadline, but you're aimlessly typing random letters on the page, none of which seems to make sense, and you're getting more and more frustrated as every minute passes. That deadline that you have in two weeks seems to be coming round very quickly and, at this rate there is no way you are going to make it! Whether you are experiencing this for the first time or for the hundredth time and you're at a loss as to what you should do, don't despair. You can consider yourself as having a case of writer's block or being stuck in a rut; it can and does happen even if you haven't been neglecting your work. Other writers experience this too. Your muse needs to be fed

It's said that a problem or premise can be viewed from two distinctive points of view -- the observer viewpoint and the merged viewpoint. Today's creativity method focuses on the second viewpoint. The merged viewpoint occurs when you become the object of the observation. You become the subject of your observation, and you observe from the point of view of your subject. This is referred to as projective identification. Projective identification can be purely fantasy: What's it like to be a potato about to become French fries? How does it feel like to be a gum stuck in a shoe? Imagine what it's like to be an ink cartridge. Or it can be empathetic: Seeing the situation through a laborer's eyes Getting inside the skin of an AIDS victim Being in the shoes of a chronically depressed person For your creative activity today, write 2 short texts (100-200 words) using projective identification for the following: Fantasy: What's it like to be a picture frame