Monday, September 30, 2013
A Blurb: And on the Eighth Day
After a time machine is discovered on the slopes of Pike's Peak in the not too distant future, a man's body charred beyond recognition in the cockpit, a secret consortium gains control and turns the time machine to profit. Who among the elite of The Grove caste wouldn't pay exorbitant fees to travel back 32,000 years for the ultimate hunt? A hunt to track and kill the nearly human: Neanderthals. But on this final expedition, one of the consortium's clients has a different fate in mind. For the Neanderthals...and for Humankind.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Work and Play
Writers talk a
lot about work and perseverance and stubbornness, but exactly what do we mean
by those nouns, and how, precisely--in practical, actual, real life terms--do
we go about turning them into verbs so one might truly approach our writing as,
well, work? Something you do when you're tired, or bored, or empty, or
hung over. Something you do because it's time to do it. As in,
every day.
Wow, that really sounds like work. Like a job.
But this writing is an art, isn't it? Something at which we love to play and be creative, right?
So often, as fledgling writers, we grasp at the shiny prize of completing our first story or sometimes even just a scene or a single brilliant paragraph, then we wait for the next lure to come flying into the water so we can snap it up. Muses, grace, inspiration, they all have their bauble of twisting silver and furry knots, and we just know another will come our way from that cobalt space above our heads . . . someday . . . someday. And so we wait, assuming our writing is something that will find us. Eventually.
Sounds like one of the archetypal questions in those debates we relish at writers conferences, MFA programs, or over a beer or a single malt with our struggling fellows: Should a writer actually write every day, treating it like a damned job?
As a latecomer to writing fiction, my initial approach was to hover in the shallows, half dozing, waiting for that splash that would spring me into action, only occasionally wondering why I wasn't making much progress besides yammering on to everyone I met that I was writing a novel. Then I discovered the Antioch Writers Workshop, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and met real live, published authors who chatted about their work habits and their workspace and laughed and moaned about sitting down to write with the needle on the big fat E. That approach had never occurred to me, and I heard Maynard G. Krebs's plaintive whine echoing through the water.
But Robert Inman, author of Captain Saturday and Old Dogs and Children, said it best. When asked that age old question about writing every day, he said he'd learned the hard way, working on his first novel. He'd written steadily most days but then, for whatever reason, hadn't written for a week or so. When he came back to his project, he found that his characters had been going about their business in his story . . . but they wouldn't tell him what they'd been up to!
Those fickle bastards!
So, I gave it a try and, voila, after many fits and starts, it actually made a difference, allowed me to get into some rhythm, to feel like I was making genuine progress. So now, I do my best (copout intended) to write daily, in the early mornings, in my home office, in the quiet, and I even appreciate the fact that what flows from my fingers is often nothing more than silt. But I'm writing.
What's your take and how do you approach the job of writing?
Wow, that really sounds like work. Like a job.
But this writing is an art, isn't it? Something at which we love to play and be creative, right?
So often, as fledgling writers, we grasp at the shiny prize of completing our first story or sometimes even just a scene or a single brilliant paragraph, then we wait for the next lure to come flying into the water so we can snap it up. Muses, grace, inspiration, they all have their bauble of twisting silver and furry knots, and we just know another will come our way from that cobalt space above our heads . . . someday . . . someday. And so we wait, assuming our writing is something that will find us. Eventually.
Sounds like one of the archetypal questions in those debates we relish at writers conferences, MFA programs, or over a beer or a single malt with our struggling fellows: Should a writer actually write every day, treating it like a damned job?
As a latecomer to writing fiction, my initial approach was to hover in the shallows, half dozing, waiting for that splash that would spring me into action, only occasionally wondering why I wasn't making much progress besides yammering on to everyone I met that I was writing a novel. Then I discovered the Antioch Writers Workshop, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and met real live, published authors who chatted about their work habits and their workspace and laughed and moaned about sitting down to write with the needle on the big fat E. That approach had never occurred to me, and I heard Maynard G. Krebs's plaintive whine echoing through the water.
But Robert Inman, author of Captain Saturday and Old Dogs and Children, said it best. When asked that age old question about writing every day, he said he'd learned the hard way, working on his first novel. He'd written steadily most days but then, for whatever reason, hadn't written for a week or so. When he came back to his project, he found that his characters had been going about their business in his story . . . but they wouldn't tell him what they'd been up to!
Those fickle bastards!
So, I gave it a try and, voila, after many fits and starts, it actually made a difference, allowed me to get into some rhythm, to feel like I was making genuine progress. So now, I do my best (copout intended) to write daily, in the early mornings, in my home office, in the quiet, and I even appreciate the fact that what flows from my fingers is often nothing more than silt. But I'm writing.
What's your take and how do you approach the job of writing?
Friday, September 6, 2013
Sci Fi Agonistes II
So, five or six months months after the publisher's request, and while still working on a couple more short stories for my collection about the star crossed lovers, I had read some stories and novels and had begun dabbling in ideas for a sci fi story....
The Last Time Traveler: Initial Notes
A billionaire in a post apocalyptic period some 100 years in the future hires an exorbitantly expensive guide to take him on the hunt of a lifetime, a hunt for the near human.
Background: A series of nuclear explosions have devastated Washington DC and the surrounding areas of Maryland and Virginia after the US has fractured with Texas and Arizona seceding and creating a new country. Much of this is hazy in the story, though. The country is still ruined and the effects of global warming, with its extremes of temperatures, of storms, and rising sea levels have significantly changed the landscape. Trees were blown down and/or burned in the conflagration, so the hills and mountains of western Maryland are barren and eroding, mud covered from the near constant autumn rains and winds. Actually wouldn't there be new growth?
The Last Time Traveler: Initial Notes
A billionaire in a post apocalyptic period some 100 years in the future hires an exorbitantly expensive guide to take him on the hunt of a lifetime, a hunt for the near human.
Background: A series of nuclear explosions have devastated Washington DC and the surrounding areas of Maryland and Virginia after the US has fractured with Texas and Arizona seceding and creating a new country. Much of this is hazy in the story, though. The country is still ruined and the effects of global warming, with its extremes of temperatures, of storms, and rising sea levels have significantly changed the landscape. Trees were blown down and/or burned in the conflagration, so the hills and mountains of western Maryland are barren and eroding, mud covered from the near constant autumn rains and winds. Actually wouldn't there be new growth?
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