Your characters have attitudes before your story starts. Before page one and sentence one, they already have a strong point of view about the world. More specifically, they are evaluating how the world (the life all around them) is treating them. Good or bad. It’s critical that you know what makes them tick before whatever…
The Eclipse Who among us, given a sextant and a supercomputer, could accurately predict the arrival of the next solar eclipse? Yeah, me neither. They (those scientist / astronomer types) started predicting eclipses 300 years ago. I have one question: “how?” But the sight of millions of people moving to the path of totality made…
A friend is getting ready to teach an online college-level course about “the business of creative writing.” He asked me for any strategies I would suggest along those lines and to pass along “things I’ve learned.” His prompt led me to write this note, below. Here’s what I sent him. ++ Things I’ve learned ……
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I’ll admit it. I’m a bit of a grump about the whole New Year thing. I’m a skeptic, too, when it comes to making and keeping resolutions. The whole January 1st date feels random to me. I mean, who decided? Why isn’t it July? Or February? And why do we have to do these things…