Category: Philosophy of Writing
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How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall?
If making New Year’s resolutions is cliché, surely it’s also become a cliché to declare that resolutions are silly. “95% of resolutions fail by January 7!” we might say, smugly. “Glad I never want to get better at anything!” Except, of course, most of us do want to get better at something. Maybe you want…
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THINKING ABOUT VILLAINS
Last year I listened to the audiobook Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, And The Secret History Of The 60s. It had me hooked, because I can remember as a teen in the early 90s when Manson’s crazed face got put on black T-shirts and placed on serial killer trading cards. This is a true horror…
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The Natural Rewards of Writing
I’m sure there are people out there who began writing because they wanted fame and fortune (although I can’t imagine anyone who keeps writing because of all the loose fame and fortune laying around in publishing). Every writer I know, however, began writing for a couple of reasons: There are some writers who are happy…
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Lying for a Living
“Literature was not born the day when a boy crying ‘wolf, wolf’ came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels. Literature was born on the day when a boy came crying ‘wolf, wolf,’ and there was no wolf behind him.”~ VLADIMIR NABOKOV Lies are funny things. The smaller…
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I’m Not Normal
There’s something wrong with me. There must be. I mean, other than writing horror stories – in both senses as I’m not much of a writer – I look and act, for the most part, relatively normal. Well, as normal as normal goes I guess. I’m quite boring. Ordinary. You’d find talking to a lump…
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Why Writing About What Interests You Is The Way To Go
It’s easy for writers to look at what’s selling and what’s winning awards and decide to try and do something similar. The hard part is when you sit down to start writing that story and find that the words won’t come. It all comes down to what you’re interested in. If you have no interest…
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Words Matter
Words Matter The boy (it’s always a boy; girls know better the value of words) prodded at the thick object in front of him. Nothing happened. In the year 2350, this just wasn’t right. Where was the floating three dimensional view screen? He prodded some more. Then swiped up, then down, then sideways. Nothing! Stupid…
Threads that Bind 