I’m thinking, I’m thinking

Today was the first day in a week that I didn’t wake up thinking about the story obsessing me. The thinking waited until after breakfast to come after me. I think I’ve come to the stage of sorting it all out, and deciding just how many books it wants to be. I think it’s a […]

The muse is a useful fiction

I don’t really believe in the Muse, but I do think that allowing yourself to believe in visitations from an external “muse” or “genius” is a useful fiction. It’s like when practicing Taiji, if you allow yourself to believe that qi energy is flowing through your body, it makes it easier to relax into the […]

The something that happens when you write every day

I’ve been thinking about a quote from Flannery O’Connor that ran in Writers Almanac a while ago. I write only about two hours every day because that’s all the energy I have, but I don’t let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place. This doesn’t mean I produce […]

Caught by a wave

All day yesterday and today, I’ve been working obsessively on a story that could be a sequel to the big fast mess of a novel I wrote a few years. Or it could be another big fat mess. It feels like I’m riding a wave and I don’t want to come down. The cool part […]

Writing first thing

I seem to have discovered, much to my surprise, that I’m one of those people who need to get a little writing done first thing in the morning. I’ve resisted this idea for ages; it always seems to be couched in terms of getting up before dawn to write for a few hours. That ain’t […]

In which I indulge in an extended metaphor

This comment from last week has me thinking: Yes, est. writers get a lot of slack to do what they want, but then how are new writers supposed to know what’s acceptable?

First paragraphs

Since I’m still struggling with my current draft, I’d like to suggest a couple of links about beginnings. What got me thinking about this was a quote from Gabriel García Márquez on how the first paragraph contains the whole book: One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months […]

The wrong deadline

Today was the deadline I set to find out how silly I could make a story, and the answer turns out to be: not very silly at all. Even when I set it, I knew perfectly well that I would be too distracted by the prospect of beer to get very far. Sometimes, I manage […]

Move along, something to write here

I’ve been fiddling with the first paragraph of the current rough draft, and fiddling with it, and fiddling with it, and, and. Enough. Today I finally told myself to stop and — shocker! — I pushed through the next five hundred words. And started working on the next five hundred. The maddening thing is this: […]

Don’t encourage me

So yesterday, I got an encouraging rejection, basically saying keep seeking a home for this story. I have no problem with that. I do my best to push a story right back out into the finest slush piles. And I’m hoping to find this story a good home, but all the professional markets that haven’t […]