Storytellersunplugged

If this column goes anywhere -- and bear in mind that no one has ever accused me of writing from a plan -- I hope it leads to this conclusion: EVERY GREAT MUSICIAN WHO CREATES THEIR OWN SONGS IS A WRITER AT HEART, AND EVERY GREAT WRITER IS A MUSICIAN. Now, I’m no kind of great writer, and I’m all the way around the world from being a great musician, but you don’t have to be either in order to read and ... Read More

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

by David Niall Wilson You try and you try and you just can't escape that old "art" vs. ART thing. There are a great number of forms of artistic expression. Some have been grouped into "The Fine Arts" – and among these, standing tall, is Literature. The problem is that every one of those different disciplines in the Fine Arts has its brethren in the upper, middle and lower classes, and even in the sewers and junkyards. Perception is among ... Read More

The people attended the funeral, and toasted sombre flutes, when the King of Bad Days choked to death on a Calamity Fruit. As everyone knows, the calamity fruit grows, on the Tortured Wallow Tree, in the Orchards of Misery. They are the succulent source of all ill fortune, when chewed and spat into a magical spittoon. The old King was popular, giving a bad day once a moon, or if a person was naughty, then maybe two. But the new King, ... 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

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

THE KEY LIME PIE-EFFECT by Matteo Curtoni “I haven't had a key lime pie in ten years.” “When ya had it, did ya like it?” “I was a completely different person ten years ago. Let's give key lime a day in court. And a large glass of milk.” – from Natural Born Killers I know – being worried about readers’ reception is essentially silly. And I feel it’s even sillier when you’re not exactly worried and you’re still hard at work on a novel that’s coming out in ... 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

(Pinch hitting today, so my apologies for the lateness of this post. - J) A scene is the most basic building block of a novel.  String enough of them together in the correct way and you’ve got a page turner.  Do it incorrectly and you’re almost guaranteed to have a flop.  Of all the lessons I've learned in my time as a writer, this is the most fundamentally important in my view.  The average novel contains anywhere from twenty to sixty scenes.  Go ... Read More

by David Niall Wilson  I find myself in an odd position, at least odd for me. I almost always approach the plotting and creation of a new novel by starting with one element and branching out. For instance, when I wrote "The Mote in Andrea's Eye," it was because Trish asked me "Why have no hurricanes disappeared into The Bermuda Triangle?" When I wrote "Ancient Eyes," I started with the desire to expand on the hill folk that were depicted in the movie ... Read More