Storytellersunplugged

Flamingo Frank would hate it if I wrote his obituary, especially with black crepe hung all over it. Much too dreary. But early on the dawn of August 2, 2008 -- by his own decision, you can be quite certain -- Frank T. Wydra decided he’d had enough of wrestling with pancreatic cancer and told the subversive processes that were racking his body, “Okay, you want it, you got it.” He could do that because his physical presence was the least of ... Read More

Friday the 13th of June was a lucky day for me.  That was the start of a three-day weekend on Cross Lake, Minnesota, as a guest of Glenn Frey.  The friendship goes back 20 years now, and though our muses have different addresses and our histories follow different maps, we are brothers in the ether.  His muse glides elegantly from one success to the next; mine lives in the woods and sweats a lot.  His maps cover the Seven Wonders of the ... Read More

Seems one of the things I keep running across endlessly is writers who don't quite know how to finish what they've started. Oh, they have the ideas, they have the energy, and they have the determination, but when it comes to actually writing down the words and making them work, the writers in question falter and then simply stop. A good number of them have quit writing after a few attempts and others simply start on the next project and run across the ... Read More

by Bev Vincent Three minutes from now, right about when you’re almost finished reading this essay, a bomb is going to go off. You don’t know this, but everyone else does. Sure, I could have just set the bomb off without telling anyone, but that would have caused only a brief moment of shock. This way, everyone else is going to watch those red LEDs counting down from 3:00 to 2:00 to 1:00 to 0:30 and, ultimately, to 0:01. Everyone will be screaming ... Read More

My mind went on a diet a while ago and already it’s lost nearly 1800 words.  It started by eliminating all those empty adjectives and adverbs that just pile bulk on the body of my work without any real nutrition.  Then it tossed out the interjections (pure comfort words – WOW! huh?).  You’re allowed substitutions on this diet, and so next went a bunch of nouns, replaced by less rich pronouns.  I feel much better now.  I have more energy and I ... Read More

Get the podcast - or Subscrbe in iTunes If I do this right, this post will be exactly 500 words (not counting the title). Why? Because it shouldn’t take more than that to discuss (not “talk about”) flash fiction, the class of stories shorter than X words (where X could be 1000, 500, 250…). For example: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. This six-word “story,” penned by Ernest Hemingway, never a garrulous writer to begin with, is often cited as the ne plus ultra ... Read More

I think it was the DragonBar that made me remember an early lesson in my writing career.  And that happened because the carp 'n' tuna syndrome that beset my wrists after too many 18-hour marathons at the keyboard eventually led me to try voice activation software.  Dragon NaturallySpeaking with its DragonBar is arguably the leader in that field.  I had tried using it in the late 90s to write a book for a celebrity, but the error rate just killed me when ... Read More

When it comes to writing, every day is April Fools’ Day.  The Muses -- hobgoblins of the mind that they are -- play their usual tricks 24/7/365.  Clear your desk, your computer screen and your brain for them and they will clear out of town.  Cut yourself off from pen and paper and they will immediately begin dictating the great American novel to you.  They have a sense of humor, a sense of irony, and no sense of obligation whatsoever.  Swim a ... Read More

To: JERRY WILLIAMSON IN SPRINGTIME by Mort Castle Dear Jer, I figured it a good time to write because it is April and spring has come to Illinois--more or less, it hath, because last week snow still lay on the ground and a mixture of the same and rain is predicted for this weekend ... See, remembering over the many years, it was always this season when we both shook off hibernation and got springtime-goofy in those long, late night phone calls in the ... Read More

My mother liked to get things done and hated to impose on anyone. This may be why she never made it to the maternity ward and birthed me in the lobby of a hospital. It was the first of many surprise entrances through the wrong door at the wrong time of life that have dogged me ever since. Now you might think that bad timing would be fatal to a writer or to anyone reaching for high stakes against long odds, and ... Read More