It’s the season for spectator sports, and I don’t mean baseball or playoff hockey. I’m talking about the book awards season, which in my opinion, qualifies as a spectator sport. It’s almost always entertaining, there’s usually an underdog to cheer for, a favourite, a healthy amount of suspense and hoopla, and sometimes even intrigue and dirty pool. Read more
Category: on writing
Imperfect Perfection
I recently finished a great book featuring a character I just love. The writer of this character has made a lot of money from a successful series of books centred around this one persona. After discussing it with some friends, I realized one of the things that made the story so readable was that the protagonist was believable. And what made her believable?
She wasn’t perfect. Read more
Resistance Training in Writing
Every word I’ve written has taken the slaying of a dragon to get to the page. The dragon is my resistance to writing that rears its ugly head each and every time I try to fool myself that I can write, or that I should write instead of the multitude of other tasks that lie undone. I don’t know what it’s like for other writers, how many face this resistance, but I know there’s a few of us.
I’m always left asking myself, Why do I want to do this if my inner self is always shouting, No? What makes me wake up at an ungodly hour, or shun social events, phone calls; so I can write, push against this resistance? If only I was at the gym, I’d be looking great by now. Read more
Under the Influence
As writers, our job is to create stories. Unique stories. It doesn’t matter whether they take shape inside poems, short stories or novels, because either way, we are still developing distinctive characters and a plotline. We are telling a story from beginning to end. The question is, how do you come up with the uniqueness of the story, when there are already billions of stories in existence. How will your story stand out from the rest? It may not be that unique after all. Or is it? Read more
No Time To Write!
I’ve not said it, but I’ve thought it more than a few times recently. I have no time to write.
You know, I’ve been busy. I sold my house, packed up my belongings, moved.
And I’ve taken on some new responsibilities. I’ve started doing a few new things that I’ve always wanted to try. And I’ve not stopped doing the other things I was able to do before I had freed myself of my mortgage.
And now, I catch myself thinking that I’m too busy to write.
Read more
Writing with Confidence
“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it people like me!”
For those of you who are fans of Saturday Night Live, you’ll probably recognize that quote from one of the many episodes of ‘Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley’ that ran on the powerhouse comedy show throughout the 1990s.
Comedian Al Franken played Stuart, who in a nutshell, was a pretty insecure dude who dedicated his life to self-help (he was in several 12-step programs but not a licensed therapist as the voice over on his cable network television show explained). Read more
A Fool for Stories
Last night I did something I hadn’t done in a while. I laid out some tarot cards and gave myself a reading.
I’m not great at knowing what each card represents. I still need the companion book to decipher what the Four of Cups is trying to tell me, or why the Queen of Pentacles is upside down. After all thirteen cards were translated, I realized they all fit together and told a little story. A story of my life; the recent past and what the future might hold, and right in the middle – the present – was The Fool. Me. Read more
A Writing Group = A Little Less Crazy Together
The immense benefits of a writing group are not always obvious from the beginning of an adventure. You may have mixed feelings as you sign up for a writing course or attend a conference or sit in on a writer’s group meeting as an observer, but I can tell you, there will be benefits you could never have imagined. Read more