1. Check out this fantastic piece in The New Yorker on the land-based writing habits (and more) of Herman Melville. Melville felt he had all of Moby Dick in his head and just needed to write it down. By the way, if you’re writing fiction, I hope you know you already belong to the same…
Category: Blog
The Immediacy of Action
Writing an action sequence is a unique part of writing. All of the rest of writing—setting a scene, establishing a character, revealing an epiphany, etc.—are all different as well. But they are clear siblings of each other. Action stands apart from all the others as much as a raven sitting on a wire amidst blue…
Publish or Perish (Your Writing Career, That is)
As part of my job maintaining the adult fiction collection for the local public library, I have to weed books. I know it sounds awful—getting rid of books—but we have limited space, so it has to be done. I’ve been weeding the collection for a long time, removing books that are damaged or worn out…
Research status? Confusing, cluttered, and chaotic!
Research, both noun and verb, means to investigate for facts—explore, analyze, delve into. But what’s next? I overheard an author, I think Susan Spann, say that by writing a rough draft first, she then knew what research she needed. A quarter of the way through self-editing my final draft, I tested Ms. Spann’s idea. By…
The Element of Surprise
I recently started a new project at my day job, with a new team of coworkers. Naturally, the writer in me began studying these people in search of writing fodder. After just a few interactions, I could paint a picture of my colleagues’ personalities in broad strokes. Character A: confident and self-assured. Character B: easygoing…