THIS POST IS BEING WRITTEN in yEdit, one of Simon Haynes‘ many fine Spacejock Software products. He doesn’t know I’m writing it, and until I stumbled across his website I didn’t know he was a famous Australian science-fiction author with…
Tag: craft
The “writing” part of Writing.
O Hamlet! O Holden!
ONE OF THE SPARE JOYS of bohemian pretention is, and perhaps always has been, writing sad poems in the rain, letting each misty drop efface and blur the tortured scribble; pearls of moisture like the very angels’ tears weeping for…
5 Thoughts: How To Preach A Sermon
1. Make ’em laugh with, but not at, you and your topic. But make ’em laugh first. 2. Remember that you’re a student too, no more learned (and perhaps embarrassingly less) than those listening to you. Your task is to…
Writing News: The Interview
HAVING LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY “DONE this in my sleep(1)” on occasion as ahem an award-winning reporter for the Sonoma Index-Tribune and Sonoma Sun (and freelancer for the Novato Advance, Petaluma Argus-Courier and The Bohemian) and being somewhat-to-greatly rankled by what…
All Purpose Disclaimer
THE VIEWS OF THE AUTHOR may not reflect whatever he’s thinking about now, or however he’s thinking about it, although they most likely did when he wrote whatever you read; thus and likewise, he is not responsible for anything you…
Pithyism #104
WHEN COMPUTERS SUPERSEDED TYPEWRITERS, SPELLCHECK superseded the dread of whole-page retyping — and encouraged laziness.
Advice to (Young) Writers
SEEK IMMORTALITY THROUGH YOUR WRITING — not your writhing. (Adapted from a quip by Ann.)
Three Reasons Why I Like My New Yorker Rejection Slip
1. THEY RECOGNIZE THE SUPERIOR QUALITY of my work by admitting that they “regret that (they) are unable to carry it in the magazine.” You can’t regret doing something that’s not regretworthy, right? Right? 2. They spelled my name right.…
5 Thoughts: Fiction- v. News-Writing
1. YOU STOP WRITING A NEWS piece when you run out of facts. But when do you stop writing fiction? When you run out of story, I suppose. 2. In news, the most important information goes up top. In fiction,…
Posts That Never Were
THE IMMEDIACY OF BLOGGING CREATES, for the blogger, a whole new way of looking at the world. It’s not much different from the world of any writer in terms of the compulsion to record, comment on and embroider every living…
5 thoughts: James Joyce
IN HONOR OF BLOOMSDAY 2010, five thoughts on the man who made it possible: 1. James Joyce is yet another proof that one man’s mind can be bigger than his skull. (If not, generational banks of Joyce scholars would have…
Pithyism #2.35
THE FIRST TIME, YOU SEE/READ/HEAR IT for the story; the second time for nuance; third (and thereafter) is sheer love of craft.