My thoughts and ideas on various topics, including advice about writing and getting published.
Do the tools the artist uses to advance his craft matter, and if so to what extent? I recently faced this question in an endeavor I didn’t expect the answer to matter, namely in my writing. To facilitate writing on the go, anywhere writing, as it were, sometime I ago I procured a tablet with […]
You would think that after I posted my polemic about not counting words but making words count, that would settle the matter (yes, that’s a joke). Yet, a couple of days ago I ran across yet another blog posting about the need for word count quotas. We’re all different, and I’ll avoid the fallacy that […]
How or why do we believe? How do some of us, all apparently reasonable people, some even raised in the same household, come to hold diametrically or otherwise incompatible beliefs? These two questions get at the difficulty with an assumption that many take for granted. We come to believe that which makes sense, that which […]
What does growing mango and avocado trees from seeds have to do with writing? I read somewhere that an author must tend to his or her garden of stories, those published and those soon to come out. Without too much over-thinking or dropping into sappy cliches, I see some merit in that word picture. Recently […]
Did I make a mistake when I set my writing aside to self-express myself through photography? Having returned now to the written word, I have been contemplating — I do that a lot — what if anything I can take from photography into my writing. Did I waste ten years of my life during which […]
Ever since, Julian Rodgers, one of my DEAD BEEF characters said, “Keep it random, keep it real,” I’ve been raising my eyebrows, laughing and crying at some of the things my characters say. This may sound a little creepy, but they come up with these things all on their own. I often stare at the […]
What do you think about the writing only what you know? If you’re a reader, how enjoyable would books be if authors stick to what they know? As those loaded questions may already suggest, my enthusiasm for the “write what you know” oft-spouted advice wanes to the max. Here’s my first Tweetable thought on the […]
About one of the most painfully life-changing things I’ve ever done is to take up marathoning. In the end, plagued by a varied array of injuries, after running four misery-riddled races, I opted for shorter distances. I still go running a few miles here and there, during which I manage to clear my head and […]
Recently, I’ve enjoyed magical days during which I’ve clocked ten thousand or more words. This blessed outpouring came during my recently released Decisive Moment and has taken place again during my ongoing work on episodes 1 and 2 of my Tracking Jane series. Trouble is, this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes I barely squeeze out five […]
In both my reading and writing, I’ve always struggled with flashbacks. As a reader, I’ve trudged through my fair share of voluminous, interminable flashbacks, wondering when I’m getting back into present action, and quite honestly, at times feeling like I’m in a lecture hall while my professor/author data-dumps all he knows about a situation and/or […]
