Tag: charlie jane anders

Four Questions to Keep Asking About Your Characters by Charlie Jane Anders

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I mentioned previously that I’ve been reading Charlie Jane Anders’ craft book Never Say You Can’t Survive that dropped recently. I’m finding her insight refreshingly accessible and compassionate. She believes in her characters, and she especially believes in their feelings and how those feelings drive their decisions and move the plot forward.

My expertise is mostly in memoir and poetry, but I like to read about how all kinds of authors make a book happen, whether they’re writing about a mother with unrecognized mental illness (hello!), a murder mystery set in Paris during the Belle Epoch, or mushroom-shaped aliens from the planet Gorb who just want to be friends with humans–or so it seems.

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Charlie Jane Anders Connects Creativity with Survival

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This matters to me because when I don’t write, I start to feel sick. My body stiffens, my curiosity wanes, my fatigue worsens, and anxiety begins to poke a fiery hole in my chest.

Writing eases all of that. Almost any kind of writing, in fact. I have my big projects on which I want to make progress, but just putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard to write anything at all breaks open an invisible portal in me and cleans out what is sticky and stagnant and slowing me down.

Continue reading Charlie Jane Anders Connects Creativity with Survival