Archive for July, 2007
THE HYPOCRITE’S OATH?
{This month, Rick asked me to post an essay written by a friend of his, Mike Paulle, a well known writer in the realm of poker coverage. There are some words that deserve a wider audience, and Rick offered these words a voice here. In the man’s own words…Believe!)
From the Greek: To please [...]
Write Here, Write Now
Here’s one trick about writing: Sometimes you have to do it even when you don’t want to. If you write full-time for a living, as I do, it happens more than you (or I) might want to think about.
Writing is a dream, right? Something a lot of writers do to get away from their day [...]
A Matter of Perspective
–Justine Musk
1
My 3 year old son was diagnosed with high-functioning autism. At that point my understanding of such things began and ended with the movie RAIN MAN, but it turns out that autism falls along an entire spectrum, from very severe to very mild. My son falls into the mild end and, thanks [...]
Cursed?
—-Deborah LeBlanc—-
My sister is married to a preacher. He’s a nice enough guy, pretty down to earth, and has a fairly large and growing congregation. Their faith is a mixture of Baptist and Assembly of God. In other words, as some folks around my parts would say, they’re Holy-Rollers with a governor on the engine.
Anyway, [...]
Why go to conventions?
–Bev Vincent
As writers, besides income tax and agent commissions, attending conventions is our biggest annual expense. Everything else pales by comparison—memberships dues in professional organizations, postage, ink cartridges, paper—and with a growing trend toward electronic submissions, some of these are decreasing. Even so, the necessity of paying for the tangible tools of our trade is [...]
THOMAS SULLIVAN: 3-LEGGED STALLIONS HOPPING TOWARD HOPE BETWEEN THE GARDEN AND THE VACUUM
I love writing about 4-letter words. Mort Castle beat me to this one about five months ago. He wrote about LUCK. Didn’t say whether it was good luck or bad, but from the standpoint of whether wild cards get dealt into our lives from some unseen dealer or we just parlay fear [...]
Characters: The Heart of Your Story
by Joe Nassise
I’m in the midst of teaching an online workshop called Jump Start Your Novel, which focuses on the methods I use to organize a project so that I can write the most powerful novel possible in a reasonable time frame. In the workshop we’ve been talking a bit about characters, so I [...]
A Fresh Eye and a New Nose
by John B. Rosenman
If you’re like me, you sometimes find the process of revision to be difficult because you’re too close to the story or novel you’ve written. It’s too familiar and you struggle to be objective. Perhaps you’ve already gone over your masterpiece a dozen times and each time, you’re not really reading so [...]
The Gonquin Table: As time goes by…
Frank T. Wydra
It’s one of those spongy July days where you get as much water as air in every breath. The bar of the Gonquin is at least out of the sun, and overhead blades mix the breathable soup. We are relatively cool and the iced drinks ease the pain of breathing.
Though [...]
Teach you something?
So, I recently started working with another new writer. I do that from time to time, because, frankly, I believe in paying it forward and I have had more help than you can imagine over the course of my career.
Now, I suspect I should tell you what I mean when I say “help.” First, it [...]
