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Wasting Time
“What a waste of time!” Probably the ultimate insult or rebuke, an inference that some small portion of your existence has been stolen by an experience or activity so useless, so pathetic as to leave you with nothing of value whatsoever. Well, I’ll never get those two hours back. It’s the movie “Forecast: Cloudy with…
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How NOT to Twist a Plot
Ah, the plot twist! That unexpected swing of the story nobody saw coming that widens the eyes, quickens the heart, and sets the mind to racing. It can be the rousing climax of the book…or a puzzling let down with a “Huh?” or worse “What the…?” I just finished White Smoke by Andrew Greeley, and…
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Style over Substance – The Cost of Typos
A few months ago, I wrote a blog post on critics where my work was the focus of review. This one turns the tables, and I’m the one critiquing a new author. I’ve been trying to familiarize myself with the urban fantasy genre (since that’s what I’m supposed to be writing), so I’ve been reading…
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Review: Origin by Dan Brown
I’ve started writing book reviews. Entirely for myself. Only short, 1-2 pages summaries of the book I’ve just read, trying to capture the essence of the work, recording its strengths and weaknesses, and how they may relate to my own writings. This is termed “analytical reading”, an awareness of what the author is doing even…
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Chapter Boards
When you write a book, you don’t start out with a first sentence and go merrily along to the closing paragraph, pausing only briefly to correct punctuation. The process is much more involved, creating, altering, and often ultimately rejecting a wide range of characters, chapters, and even entire sections of the book. The manner of…
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Writer’s Block
We all (as in all who indulge in creative writing) run into it on occasion: an invisible wall oriented somewhere within our brain that deadens the imagination and stops the hands from typing. It can rise up abruptly when you’re trying to figure out the next chapter, the ending of the book, or the ensuing…