Lisa Young

Novelist Lisa de Nikolits tells us how she gets story ideas and how these ideas evolve… My brain is an attic filled with psychotic people. And each of these crazies has one thing in common; they’re all obsessed with words. They scurry around with their buckets and pails, pushing wheelbarrows that spill words and fragments of sentences, and each word or sentence is umbilically attached to the embryo of an idea. They’re ravenous, these crazies; they have an aching need for these words and ideas to take shape – they long for me to relieve them of the burden of the tiny letters and they beg me to shape the fragments into coherent sentences and thoughts. I feel the weight of these madfolk in my head; their rat claws bite the undulating surface of my brain as they run, they twist little ankles in their haste to push their way to the front line, and they’re not shy to give my skull a good thwack either, when they’re feeling particularly insistent.   They get their...

 I know my book launch isn't until November, but it's starting to feel like it's getting very close all the same. I don't usually make collages  –  however  –  I decided I'd "get out" all my anxiety about the launch by putting it into picture form. It was a great relief somehow. So here it is for your general entertainment. I continue to be taken by Julia Cameron's writing. The book I have of hers now is called, The Sound of Paper. She's the one who "believes" in collages. She has interesting exercises in her book including one where you write about yourself in the third person  –  distance yourself and write yourself as a character. I've done this exercise once before. I tried it again today and I seemed to be just a little more honest the second time around. It's amazing how I edit myself as I write  –  well I can't say this or that  –  and let's not get maudlin or overly dramatic,...