Hey, I think I just made up a word.
In a complete reversal to my previous post, I’m going to bore you with a list of what’s been going through my mind lately:
I just finished a revision of a short story I would say that I originally wrote over a year and a half ago, except [...]
I suppose you could call this Web site a blog. I used to have another Web site that was much more personal (embarrassingly so, in some cases—well, not embarrassing to me, but to others). It had a pretentious name, and I kept it four about five years before I finally let the domain name expire.
Why? [...]
For me, one of the things about making plans is that if I put it out there, where someone else can see it, I stand a better chance of actually following through with it. So, here are a couple of places where I’m planning to submit pieces for consideration:
Zoetrope All-Story Short Fiction Contest (which I [...]
My friend Ryan, the English graduate, paid me a fantastic compliment a couple days ago. I gave him a story of mine and asked him to read it. “There were three sentences that were just fantastic, and one of them, I wrote next to it, ‘Perfect.’”
Three great sentences in one story, one of which was [...]
I mentioned to my friend Scott the other day (I talk to Scott a lot, about writing and creativity, and I’m just grateful that he listens). He’s been making admirable strides in his photography, and it seems like things are coming together really well for him this year. He hoped I thought the same for [...]
I had forgotten all about amazon.com’s Amazon Shorts until Scott mentioned it to me today. You can buy a short story, anything from literary fiction to business and investing, and have it delivered electronically for 49 cents. There are new authors as well as established ones.
Really, I think this could be a great marketing opportunity. [...]
It’s not until I flip a switch and the light steadfastly does not come on that I realize how much I take electricity for granted. Probably, if it weren’t for my dog, Dakota (see above), I would be lying in a bathtub at home trying to sweat my way through the hottest day of the [...]
This weekend, someone asked me, “So what’s the story of your T-shirt?” It took me by surprise momentarily, because I hadn’t really considered that the T-shirt I was wearing had a story. But because of the way the question was asked—not “where did you get your shirt?” or “what’s that on your shirt?”—I answered the [...]
(As a follow-up to this post)
You can read all about it here. I’m sure it will include the “singy lady” on “the beach” thing, which I will play repeatedly whenever I am writing something grim and/or maudlin.
Don’t ask people to go where you won’t allow them to follow.
(This is what my mum would call a PU–a profound utterance–which is to say it’s more pompous than profound, probably. But you never know, there might be a pompous character who needs to say something faux-profound. Everyone needs to write a Polonius every once [...]
