Reaching for The Optimal Experience
I know the jokes about writers. We work in our pajamas, for one. We’re obviously at home too, so we ought to be able get the laundry done while we work. And since our time is our own, it’s only logical that we can run the dog to the vet, clean up the dishes,...
The Mystery of Metaphor
“To a poet nothing can be lost.” Samuel Johnson Something happened a few days ago that got me thinking about depicting emotion when I write, and how often I find my way to it through metaphor. Winter had reasserted itself, so Hannah’s forest...
On Clarity
On Sunday it was fifty-four degrees, the air edgeless, soft and pale yellow. A young fisherman in a navy sweatshirt and baseball cap was on the edge of the river where Hannah swims; he took his simple hook and line upstream a bit when Hannah leapt from the bank to...
Blame The Weather
To those readers in winter-affected areas: is the weather making everything feel like extra work to you? It is to me. Just getting dressed is a shivering labor involving long underwear under my jeans, a fleece over my shirt, wool socks as thick as my thumb....
On Structure…an approach
Have I been out to start the primary research of hunting caches yet? Okay, I’m a wimp. The ground is snow-covered, temperatures frigid. Yes, my chocolate Lab, Hannah, gets a daily hike in the woods. But geocaching involves moving more slowly than she and I do,...
In The Beginning…Research!
I’m going to try to make a case that Dr. Mark Fischer of the College of Mt. St. Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio, is normal, and it’s going to be hard. Working against me is the fact that he’s a brilliant professor of physics. Also a researcher, he teams with eminent...
Point of View: What’s Yours?
I do promise that I’ll quit following that SUV after today! (It's described in the Jan. 1st post if you're a new reader.) If you don’t mind, let’s revisit it one more time to talk about another especially important component of fiction. Point of view. An author...
Gleaning More….Details
Let’s go back to the slushy dark afternoon of my first post. Remember how I played sleuth and trailed the SUV? Already the painting on the back window had generated the makings of a plot. But a bit of tailgating yielded extra details: the birth date was Dec....
It’s All In The Details
"The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” (Henry Miller) We have slogged through the winter solstice. Long fingers of twilight still reach up and take early...