This is the third post in a series on scenes, and specifically, flat scenes. You can find part one of the series here, and part two, here. What is a flat scene? It is one in which the emotional tenor is the same all the way through. For instance your heroine may start out the […]
We interrupt the current series on scene to bring you this post on writing, fear, and creativity. I was having breakfast with my wonderful Nashville friend Sue (wait, should I say she's from Nashville if she is originally from Portland?) this morning and we started talking about feeling skittish and being nervous and anxious. (Did […]
I've been having issues with flat scenes. Flat scenes are problematic because you may not even know that they are flat. You have a vague notion that something is wrong with the scene or chapter. It is boring, or it just doesn't work for some reason. You struggle and struggle to improve them, to make […]
Christmas season has officially begun and even though I went to an awesome wine tasting and sale last night, it wasn’t at a mall or even a traditional store so thus I did not officially participate in Black Friday. I did, however, buy a handcrafted Christmas ornament and started getting in the spirit of the […]
A few days ago I wrote a post about writing and running. Since then I've been staying in Laguna Beach and running the canyon. Okay, I run down and walk back up, but then so does nearly everyone else. It is a looong way back up. Yesterday as I hit the last and steepest hill […]
You have until November 16 (tons of time) to enter the contest over at Lexus magazine. How it works is simple. You submit a 1,000 word ending to the story, "In The Belly of the Beast," a serial novella that has been published on the site since April. A huge list of well-known writers have […]
Last week I wrote a blog post titled, When One is Born a Writer.., and listed some of the things that accrue from the condition of being wonderfully scarred at birth with the love of the word. I promised then that I would compile any additions people came up with, and let me tell you, […]
"Imagination is sacred and divine–I trust it implicitly." So said Andre Dubus III at his Wordstock reading last weekend. Dubus, best known for House of Sand and Fog, read from his latest novel, The Garden of Last Days, which was inspired by the Florida sojourns of the 9-11 hijackers. After he read from the book, […]
Obama is literary. He writes his own books and they are good–I just started reading The Audacity of Hope this week. And even though I make most of my living as a ghost-writer, I applaud the man for writing it himself. Honestly? I do a great job of getting people's voices on the page, just […]
I want to make it perfectly clear that I have never, ever, not once, done any of the things on the following list. No, not me. I know some people who have, though, and they told me these things. It was yesterday, during the time I had set aside to work on my novel, when […]
