Lawrence C. Connolly

Tag: writing life

  • Overcoming Writer’s Block:
    Bono, R.E.M. & The Doorway Effect

    Some of the best advice for overcoming writer’s block comes from U2’s Bono by way of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. At least, I think that’s the case … though try as I might, I can’t locate any record of the interview. Nor do I recall anything else said in the interview or even if I came…

  • Surviving World War C:
    Music to Span the Social Distance

    Last week’s post offered a list of “Podcasts for Shut-Ins,” which included what was then an unreleased installment of Inside The Hive. Although I had expected that podcast to feature an interview with screenwriter Scott Burns (Contagion), it instead offered a conversation with radio host Kai Ryssdal (Marketplace). Titled “Coronovirus against the World,” the interview…

  • Writer at Work: Trusting the Process

    There’s a scene in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Mystère Picasso, a 1956 documentary that shows the artist Pablo Picasso at work. The artist starts with random lines, splashes of color. There seems to be no method in what he’s doing, but soon a few recognizable images emerge — a boat pulling a water skier, a woman…

  • Writer at Work:
    Santas, Wizards, & Life behind the Curtain

    So it’s December 1997. I’m driving north out of Oakland, toward Bigelow Boulevard and downtown Pittsburgh. It’s a gray day, light snow falling. Colored lights trim some of the buildings along North Craig Street, but it doesn’t feel like Christmas. Then I see him. I clear the rise toward Bigelow Boulevard, and there he is—fourteen-feet…

  • Writer at Work:
    Standing up for Your Writes

    “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” C.S. Lewis gave that advice in 1937, in an article titled, “Breaking in Print.” But it didn’t originate with him. He got it from his mentor Mary Heaton Vorse, who seems to be the source…

  • Writer at Work:
    Out of the Stories and into the World

    It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. There’s a good reason for that. I’ve been working. I’ve always regarded blogging as a leisure activity, fun when there’s time for it, but readily set aside when big projects hit. Last June, with a new film script sold and an ambitious novel expanding beyond expectations, I…