We’ve been in the planning of our pursuit of publication for 8 weeks. Eight weeks. Time flies. At this stage, there is no reason not to jump into the process. The definitions of ourselves, our work and our goals have been established, refined and understood. Hopefully, with all of this,Continue Reading
Well, after deciding not to read in the autumn, I’ve decided to go back to my old system of the reading list. The fall was terrible. Actually, now that I think of it, the summer was a bit terrible too. In the last six months I read next to nothing.Continue Reading
I’m dumbfounded at the process. Any process. For instance, several years ago I thought of writing as something that I could not share with anything else. It was in the fall, 2004, I think. I was with Eric Driskell, and we had been drinking whiskey at the bar. I don’tContinue Reading
Here we go. In the recent weeks, we’ve prepared ourselves for the flooding of the free press with our words. We’ve taken an inventory of our publishable work. We’ve spent some time refining who we are as writers and distilling our short pieces of fiction into manageable hook and synopsis sentences.Continue Reading
At this stage of our preparation, we must develop the habits, the deadlines and mode of time management for the work ahead of us. Procrastination is unacceptable. To continually put off this pursuit of publication will result in exactly what is, put off. In rehash, at this stage, we knowContinue Reading
A brief rehash of what we’ve done during this project: 1) we took an inventory of our body of work. 2) We took stock in ourselves by making a personal statement and defining ourselves as writers. 3) We practiced the task of writing cover letters. Now, we’ll start thinking inContinue Reading
After spending a couple of weeks with our volume of work, we’ve come to understand our writing. Hopefully, spending time with the short stories, novels, poems, or whatever was time well spent. In all likelihood, reading and rereading brought some ideas of vision and revision. Just having this understanding ofContinue Reading
The days are noticeably shorter. Very much so, too. It’s November after all and I’m closer to the north pole than I am to the equator. This is the nature of autumn, and it’s certainly what’s in store for winter. As I walk down SW Morrison St past the Jeld Wen FieldContinue Reading
As writers of fiction, I feel we enjoy so many more freedoms than we know. For instance, whether it is the short story or the novel, we can write pretty much untethered. As long as we write for a reader, and I mean within the confines of structure, we canContinue Reading
We’ve spent a great deal of time over these last several months talking about reading and writing. We talked about the writing of the short story, the writing of the screenplay and the writing of the novel. I have spent countless hours ranting and raving about the life of theContinue Reading