Emmi Lawrence's Blog

CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

XCV: Present

Brendon drove to his studio, the morning humid and bright. The studio itself was cool though, the stone floor echoing softly underfoot as he straightened up the strewn papers and logs he’d been sifting through yesterday evening. Then he found himself sitting on one of his paint-splattered stools, sketchbook in front of him, like so many others before it.

There’d been four. Four pictures so many years ago. He sketched a ru...

CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

XCIV: Present

Orion was up and making coffee in the kitchen before Brendon opened his eyes. He could hear the light taps of ceramic against laminate countertop, the sizzle and drip of the machine. He squeezed his eyes closed tighter, then finally dragged himself up.

They took their coffee standing against the kitchen counters, both of them half-dressed, both of them not quite looking at one another. At least, Brendon didn’t much look ...

How to keep your plots/stories from being repetitive?

So I’ve already discussed expanding your vocabulary in order to keep your sentence structures from stagnating and also how to keep your characters from feeling interchangeable and both of those will help make a story fresh. However, even if you use new vocabulary and make sure to differentiate the voices of your characters, there’s still a level in your story-writing that can make them seem similar to the point of rehashing the same-old same-...

CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

XCIII: Yesteryears

For Dmitri’s birthday (August 24th, nine days before Brendon called on Donna Pierceman), Brendon painted him on a mottled orange and green background, bright strands of Aunt Laurel’s shawls curling around like fleur de lis—or fiery threads—his arm reaching upward in a throwing motion and a waterfall of beads trailing in the wake of the ball’s trajectory.

It wasn’t his best, but Dmitri was appropriately enthused, whi...

How to critique someone else’s work?

Critiquing is a specialized skill, one that takes empathy and understanding. There are many writers groups out there and so many of them are filled with beginning writers who think that their way of writing or their preferred way of reading is the only one. They will often have only a rudimentary understanding of story guidelines and yet speak as if they are far more knowledgeable then they are. So I urge you to be cautious when listening to other people’s cr...

CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

XCII: Present

That night he dreamed of a macabre gallery where all his paintings gazed down at him.

They were countless. Crabs and carousals. Herons and homes. Forest and futurescapes. Insects and ice cream parlors. Graphic comics of half-finished panels of spiderlings. Boats cutting through the bay waves.

Dinosaurs from a younger age, where crayon and colored pencil had ruled and eyes were flattened on the same side of the reptilian ...

What to do with your Nanowrimo novel?

Or any other novel that you may have written in a short span of time.

No matter how well we write or how many hours we’ve spent on something, when we work on a project in a condensed period of time, we’re very liable to miss things. We’re simply too close. We know what words should be there. We know what the descriptions are trying to say. We understand what the dialogue is referring to. We know. Because it’s all in our heads and not just on the paper.

The b...

CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

XCI: Present

Brendon lowered his head as he gasped and strained back against Orion. They fit in a mature, slow way. The sort of way that came of experience, of methodically working their bodies in ways they knew would pull the most pleasure, give them the most relief.

This was no fumbling fuck in the backseat of a Mustang.

This was sweet and slow, with Orion whispering in Brendon’s ear all throughout.

“How’s here? Going to keep it ste...

How many times have you won Nanowrimo?

I’ve only won once. And it was with the first 82k or so words of Haunt of the Wilds.

I was actually supposed to be working on a different novel and Haunt was just going to be a quick practice to get the rust out of my brain. And then I just…kept going. No biggie.

It was also rather helpful to have my partner suspended for that month (tongue in cheek–it was a very stressful month) because it meant that I got a huge amount of time every day to write.

Every ot...

CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

XC: Yesteryears

A different sort of heat hit Castlebrock the summer after high school graduation. Heat index souring, air conditioning units on the fritz, the elderly suffering from heat stroke, the young suffering from too many drunken-fueled car accidents.

Casey started drifting back down more often, sleeping at his father’s house now that his stepmom had decided to give the man another chance at redemption. His father had gotten a ...