Pity, party of one. I’ve been in one hell of a terrible slump for probably a year or more, trying and failing to pump some life into a lagging writing career. I’m happy to report that I’m emerging from it, but it’s been a rather dreary time. I thought I’d share a little about why I’ve been feeling this way. Perhaps it’ll help other writers trying to dig their way out of the hole. My slump came to a head…
"I won't leave any unfinished manuscripts." – Harold Robbins (Good for you, Harold. I can't make such a bold statement.) Question for writers: How many unfinished books are collecting digital dust in your computer's filing cabinet? There’s a folder on my desktop called Writing. Within that folder are several additional folders for each of the projects I’ve worked on over the years – novels, screenplays, short fiction, poetry. There are outlines, character biographies, and of course the manuscripts themselves. Some of them are…
You've heard it a thousand times: "writing is rewriting." Yawn! But actually, it's so true that it's punch-you-in-the-gut frustrating. I’ve documented the writing process of my first manuscript, Welcome to Straightville, ever since I started this website, and it’s a process that is still in motion. In a nutshell, I started writing the book during a semester break in graduate school back in 2008. I worked on it slowly over the next few years before I decided that a writer…
This is the second entry into a new addition to the blog, called Stanzas, in which I'll be sharing some of the poetry and lyrics I've written over the years, along with the stories of what inspired them. I Carry On I drive these same roads Back and forth every single day. I could close my eyes And still be able to find my way. I know the scent of coming rain And how the currents sway So why…
"Writing is like seeing a picture of a place you've never visited before and wondering what it would be like to go there." – David James In a Huff Post Books column titled 7 Novels Starring American Small Towns, novelist Alan Michael Parker, in discussing setting as a character, suggests that the smaller the American town, the more likely it will function as a character…or at least agrees that it is a theory. And, along those lines, I recently attended a…
“That is perhaps the greatest parody of journalism that I have ever seen.” – Julia Sugarbaker When did I know I was going to be a writer? Was it that summer day in 1994 I wrote a poem for no real reason at all? No. The winter day in 2008 I wrote the first page of Straightville? Nada. The day in 2012 when all this happened? Nope! The first time I ever actually knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I…