Thoughts
I write a lot. Essays. Articles. Blog posts. All of them sharing what I’m thinking about. Maybe you think about these things, too.
Write Like an Actor
How would an actor approach your protagonist? How would they take your description and the situation into which you’ve plunged the character, and make that character unforgettable?
Why Stories?
Yes, it’s true: I live in my head. Wherever my current story ideas take me. To Cuba or Nepal or California. With people who sing, or tend cows, or—sometimes—commit murder. And those places and those people are real. They may not even make it out of my head, but for the time they’re there? They are still very real.
What’s in a Name?
My characters come to life as I write, not before. They shift and morph and often change the entire narrative arc of my stories. They become who they are in chapter five, or eight, or ten. So the name I started with generally just doesn’t fit the character as they emerge, as they talk with other characters, as they make choices, as they tell me where the book needs to go.
Stuck? Try a Character Tarot Read!
Doing a Tarot read for one or more of your characters is a terrific way of seeing them in another light, giving you ideas for their personalities and histories, and providing a little more depth to the way you write them for your readers.
Meet Me at the Mall?
I’ve always been fascinated with abandoned human structures, but as I mentioned, I’ve never seen any that rose and fell within my own lifetime as completely as malls, and so I find myself drawn to photographs and videos of these gargantuan empty places once echoing with so much life.
Get Your Wheels on the Ground
My first drafts are a mess. I have an occasionally faulty memory, and so nothing exists in my world until it’s written down. Because of that, I have all sorts of ideas I throw into the mix of a first draft. Some won’t stay the course. Some are frankly contradictory to other ideas I slammed down elsewhere in the manuscript. A few take on the glitter of inspiration and stay in place through publication.
Something Scary in Time for Halloween!
When placed around a word or phrase as in these examples, they’re called “scare quotes” ... and, man, are they scary!
Is AI the Beginning or the End?
I’m not worried—yet. AI can’t do what I can do—yet. Computers can’t just create stories in a void; instead, they’re given a massive number of exemplars—works that are similar to what the computer is tasked to create—which is then broken down into data. AI reads the data using statistical algorithms to recognize patterns and relationships.
Finding Your Writer's Voice — Part One
And of course every event we experience, especially crisis events, changes us. And that affects how we express ourselves.
Decluttering Your Writing Past
So, I decided, it’s time to clean out that folder. Trash the stuff that didn’t work then, doesn’t work now, will never in this lifetime even have a stab at working. It’s an interesting journey, back into the early days of my storing my work in bytes rather than paper pages, and some of it has not aged well.
Storms, Wrecks, and the Splendid Isolation of Writing
Writers think and create in isolation. Your isolation is really your workspace. No matter where you are physically, you’re simultaneously alone: it’s in your mental solitude that you build your story, that you interact with your characters, that you listen to the inner narrative voice guiding your craft. Isolation isn’t optional; it’s essential.
Why Read About Murder?
We mystery readers really, really like to read about death. Suspicious deaths, orchestrated deaths, clever deaths, carefully planned deaths. What is up with that?
Do You Have Title Envy?
Most authors function perfectly well putting the story first, and that actually may be exactly the way it should be. Yet here I remain.
Finding Stories by Excavating the Past
There’s nothing more annoying than reading a novel and coming across a glaring mistake—it makes you lose trust in the writer. So it’s always been important for me to create fiction that nestles inside fact, so to speak.
Where Do You Write?
How much does where we write affect what we write? What’s your ideal environment? Some famous authors have been pretty eccentric with theirs…
How Kintsugi Made Me a Better Writer
Instead of trying to hide them, Kintsugi calls attention to the break lines made by time, rough use, or accident.
What You Do... Or Who You Are?
I guess I’m the exception to that rule. I am a writer. It’s not just what I do to earn a living, it’s who I am.
If You Meet Me, Beware
I’m a shameless example. I carry a notebook with me. I eavesdrop on conversations, I peer into lighted rooms at night, I ask seemingly innocent questions of strangers.
A Very Drafty First Draft
So here I am, doing a marathon—not running, but writing. It’s less fun than it sounds… and I’m aware that it doesn’t really sound like fun.