ieva melgalve

I’ve always been reserved towards outlining (a lots of work that eventually leads to creating something that stiffles my creativity). I actually thought that maybe I’m a pantser or something. Probably not. Probably there is still a salvation from me. It started when I figured that the way normal outlines are done is just so [...]

When I was a teenager I thought that I had to be, in many ways, broken to write. I was afraid to be happy or even content because (1) It would mess with my angsty self-image (2) I was afraid I wouldn’t have a reason to write. I rather enjoyed all the emotionally harsh things [...]

I was apprehensive of the term when I first heard it used professionally. I didn’t believe in her as a viable concept for work; I had known “inspiration” that was basically a hit-or-miss thing, and that inspiration concept had gotten me in long periods of poor writing because I wasn’t able to work with it. [...]

Dārgo skolēn! Ja Tu esi iekļuvis šeit, meklējot informāciju par “obligāto” referātu, kas jāraksta par mani, lūdzu, izmanto šo failu. An update: it seems that the student (with the irrelevant questions) was forced to do the presentation on me as a part of an obligatory assignment. Hence, it’s not her fault, but the fault of [...]

Sometimes, when I (the average unaccomplished, unripe and only moderately successful person) have big dreams, I stop yourself and say, now, dear, you look like a fool right now. You have such big hopes and goals and you reach for the stars, but in the end you might very well die still being average. Statistically, [...]

There’s a funny thing about “writing rules”. It says, “here’s a rule, don’t break it unless you are…” and inserts a name of some great author (Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow or just about any other notable author there is or ever was). In my opinion, it’s bullshit. I don’t argue that there are [...]

Yesterday, I was sitting with a friend, talking about various things (mostly gay sex…it’s research, all right? Being a writer has some perks), and I mentioned the hunter/farmer theory. „And then there are the gatherers,” he said. „Wha?” „The gatherers. There were entire societies made of them, people gathering things, both the ones they could [...]

This is moderately like being able to tell whether somebody is gay, or having uncomfortable strings, or really really needing to fart or being dead scared while trying to appear nonchalant. The first: yay/haha, I’m can tell! The second: OMG, I wonder what others are able to tell about me? I am still not 100% [...]

Here, I wondered about who my first future reader will be. Today, it dawned on me who my “last” future reader will be; the opposite end of the spectrum: the person who reads one book a year, or maybe one book in his (or her) whole life, barring high school when you can’t really get [...]

Yesterday, I did a quick math about how much would I be able to accomplish if I worked slowly/fast/very fast over several years, played with my speed and varied the planning, writing and editing lengths and frequency to figure out how would I accomplish more without burning out. As a result, I got two years [...]