If someone asks to read my stuff I gladly provide them with some of my stories or poems. But first I tell them I will never ask them if they liked the work or even if they read it. Why? Because it avoids embarrassment. There is nothing more awkward, for both parties, than having to [...]
Posts Tagged ‘the writing life’
Deflecting an Awkward Situation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged the writing life on 13 July 2008 | 4 Comments »
The Secret
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged the writing life on 24 June 2008 | 3 Comments »
At the library where I work, people often find out that I’m a published author. The first thing they do after their discovery is not to ask me where they can read some of my work. No. What they want to know is how they can get published too. I think the reasoning goes something [...]
Workshop
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged the writing life on 12 May 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I just returned from a week long workshop on marketing for fiction writers. We learned about the publishing business, how it works, who has the power, and how to get our novels the best chance they can get. A lot of classes, a lot of assignments, a lot of reading, and not much sleep.
I learned [...]
My Life’s Work (so far)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged shameless self promotion, the writing life on 21 April 2008 | 2 Comments »
Click on the “Other Writing” tab at the top of the page and you’ll find a list of all my published short stories, poems, articles, and reviews. Also links to my previous blogs. I put this together yesterday. It was strange going through my files looking for all these items. Many many pieces I have [...]
Here’s My Crazy Idea for My Next Book
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged the writing life on 13 April 2008 | 4 Comments »
Title: One Night and a Thousand Nights. Setting: The edge of the world. The Earth is flat. Some disaster in the interior (super volcano? massive drought?) has forced most of the population to migrate to the edge. Plot: We follow several people as they try to cope with life on the edge. Each chapter [...]
Rewriting
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged the writing life on 27 February 2008 | 1 Comment »
Here’s Eileen Gunn, in her book Stable Strategies and Others, quoting William Gibson on the secret of writing:
“You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work.”
When I read that sentence I was stunned. It was like he was talking to me because what I have had to overcome is [...]
The Unrepentent Joy of Sisyphusian Struggle
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cool stuff, the writing life on 22 February 2008 | 4 Comments »
If you haven’t seen “Shelf Life” by Adrian Tomine, the hilarious cover of the current New Yorker, it’s worth seeking out. There’s a teeny tiny version of it on this page and a bigger version on the artist’s website here (currently the 4th box in the top row). It depicts the book publishing process in [...]
Notebook
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged notebook, the writing life on 11 February 2008 | 2 Comments »
Like many writers I have a notebook that I carry around for recording observations, quotes, scenes, thoughts, snippets of dialog, attempts at poems, and some of the crazy ideas I get that might someday be the impetus for a writing project. It’s an analog device with two components: a school composition book with sewn binding [...]
Interview
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged shameless self promotion, the writing life on 10 February 2008 | 2 Comments »
When I was putting the finishing touches on my novel Terrastina and Mazolli I got a call from Nenad Dragicevic, the eminent European journalist and fabulist who I have admired for many years. He had somehow obtained a bootleg copy of T & M and enjoyed it so much that he wanted to talk to [...]
Mario Who?
My Latest Book
Tags
Archives
