If you\u2019re placing people and events in Cairo, Istanbul, and Warsaw 150 years ago, you really need to read and write Arabic, Turkish, and Polish in order to be completely confident. I don\u2019t, so I cheat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
April 2 , 2026<\/a> Two Journeys<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Writing is different from reading. I write with intent and my goal is to entertain, shock, surprise, or provoke using plot as my first, but not only, focus. The nameless reader for whom I am writing, that entity out there I am trying to satisfy because I cannot write for everyone, wants to know what happens next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n January 28, 2026 <\/a>To Be Is to Have Been<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The enigma of memory lies in the necessity of both remembering and forgetting. If we don\u2019t remember, we have dementia, and we\u2019re in serious trouble. If we can\u2019t forget, we are reliving trauma with every breath. Good writers let characters forget things, and remember things from a point of view, and ignore things, with an overall effect that, in some contexts, they are thoroughly unreliable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n December 8, 2025<\/a> All You Need to Know in One Metaphor<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A novelist has to write a book for a person they have never met, has to anticipate a need that cannot be described, has to initiate an interaction that is positive enough that a reader will come back after chapter one and continue to do so to the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How the hell are we supposed to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n November 12, 2025<\/a><\/strong> Too Good To Be True<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Often, I am expected to care about a character who is presented as being rather impossibly \u2026 well, good<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, to my horror, authors use the word \u201csavvy\u201d to describe them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n November 6, 2025<\/a> Bad to the Bone<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Biological bad guys, monsters who simply obey their nature, don\u2019t interest me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, if we\u2019re making a bad guy, not simply accepting that evil exists, where do we start? Here\u2019s a few places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n March 24, 2024<\/a> The Most UnKindest Cut<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It was then when I began to inhabit my own private way-station, a place where fictional characters wait in anxious queues shuffling from gate to narrative gate in search of a destination worth the trouble of the journey. It is a place I cannot write my way out of, where my characters go not to die, but to languish unfinished, their thoughts, their wants and fears forever unexpressed for the simple reason that they are just not making the grade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n February 8, 2024<\/a> Unbearably Ubiquitous<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Guns are tools that, in American film, no self-respecting criminal or cop can do without. Today, now, there is a newer tool, and another cue for writers or actors and directors to follow as they make transitions. It\u2019s the smartphone. In film, the smartphone is out everywhere – at home, in the restaurant, in the car, in the bathroom, and the last thing anyone does is to pick it up, pocket it, or tuck it somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n November 6, 2023 <\/a> A Big Mistake<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Assuming a reader\u2019s, or an audience\u2019s good will or support for a character has to be fatal. We have to have a reason to care. If your protagonist is going to save the universe, we better care about them over and above the saving part. <\/p>\n\n\n\n October 7, 2023<\/a> Who AM I?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There was once a clever guy called Shakepeare who wrote about a lean and hungry Roman who asked his friend, \u201cTell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?\u201d After giving it a good try, his mate Brutus says, \u201cNo Cassius, for the eye sees not itself but by reflection, by some other thing.\u201d Cassius goes on to be Brutus\u2019 mirror, laying it on a bit thick if you ask me, but the point is made that we have a hard time seeing ourselves, in knowing who we are. <\/p>\n\n\n\n September 18, 2023<\/a> Another Fine Mess<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Rolling boulders, chases and shootouts, an unexpected confrontation with a soused postal worker, maybe even murder hornets all sound good. But these are narrative tight ropes and they are perilous; most often, there is no way to plausibly escape the landslide, the hail of gunfire, or the acid whip of a mother-in-law\u2019s tongue. Murder hornets, I hear, are a bitch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n February 25, 2023<\/a> Spread the Alarm<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As I hammer away on my little keyboard, keeping myself out of therapy, composing characters and trying to keep straight my beginnings from my middles and my ends, I keep stumbling over challenges, issued by online writing types, that encourage people to write to a goal, like 5000 words in a day. Sometimes they suggest writing 5000 words, biking 50 km., and running 5 km. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like a triathlon, vomiting included. <\/p>\n\n\n\n December 22, 2022<\/a> Read On, or Die Trying!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A seven-word opening sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It could be shorter, like, \u201cCall me Ishmael.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Or \u2026, \u201cIn the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n December 05, 2022<\/a> The Illusion of Creative Control<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a well-known theme. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It starts with a scientist or tinkerer or god. An act of creation. Thought and purpose become reality and some \u2026 thing exists, whereas before there was only intention. The more interesting the thing is, the more likely that it takes on a life of its own, achieving some form of independence from its creator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s when it happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n May 31, 2022<\/a> I Just Have One Question<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If the death of Socrates doesn\u2019t force some useful questions about the weaknesses of democracy, then you\u2019re missing the whole point of Socrates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n August 25, 2022<\/a> To Observe and Imagine<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n My trip to Costco was so much worse than I had imagined and, at the same time, so much better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Funnelling past the membership sentries at the garage door entrance, I dutifully tailed my sister closely, and there at the threshold held my breath, the space I perceived at once evoking feelings of both claustrophobia and agoraphobia. There was row upon row of stacked boxes preventing me from seeing any distance. At the same time, the starkly white ceiling over my head soared many stories high, empty space to spare. As I navigated this contradiction, I had to be careful not to spend too much time gaping slack-jawed at the profusion of single-item displays, the towers of TVs, the pyramids of pyjamas, lest I be run over by a bargain-hunting scavenger who knew their way around and had long ago forgotten what it was like to step in this place for the first time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n April 19, 2022 <\/a> Writing and Revising: Having a Good Scratch<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When I think I have something to say, a scene that needs describing, for example, it gets written fairly quickly. The result communicates effectively, the scene is set and I move to the next bit before I forget what it was that I really wanted to write about, normally some point of plot that needs establishing. That\u2019s how I keep going, more or less from one plot point to the next. My composing brain is motivated by narrative. It wants to tell a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n March 21, 2022<\/a> One Title, Over Easy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A chapter title means that you, the author, know what the chapter is about. For me, it helps grease the wheels in the ol\u2019 writing garret when I want to bang out another few thousand words before the week is out and I need above all else a direction. If I can come up with a title before writing the chapter, I know where I\u2019m going. If I invent it later, after the writing, it means that I know where I\u2019ve been, equally important in becoming the path I\u2019m on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n March 8, 2022<\/a> Words Suck<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There are loads of adverb haters, people who say they would like to exterminate them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I agree only to the point that you often don\u2019t need them if the rest of the page is okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take, for instance, this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cClearly,\u201d Beau said, \u201cthis is a really bad sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n February 14, 2022<\/a> What’s It All About?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There are people, and I have no idea if they are just a vocal minority among arty types, who claim to have been on a mission to fulfill a vision, something so compelling that it was there, fully realized from the first step, first word, initial brush-stroke, or notion of a gesture. They were focussed, single-minded, on a path, answering a call, on a pilgrimage to a mysterious site known only to themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, after their arty work is done, they say, \u201cLook! See what I did? That was my vision and now it exists!\u201d It is left as tribute, then, to Art. There may be light snacks and beverages served.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We mere mortals gather, are suitably impressed, then aspire to emulate the artistic act. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If only we had a vision. How do we start if we don\u2019t have one of those?<\/p>\n\n\n\n January 14, 2022<\/a> The Scariest Words<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Eat your soggy vegetables first. Always good advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rip off the band-aid. Just practical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Always get the bad news before the good. Goes without saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Write what scares you. Scary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n January 09, 2022 <\/a> The Curse of the Comically Common Name<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When I tell people my name, they don\u2019t laugh, usually, and they don\u2019t ask me how to spell it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Usually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They do pause, almost as if I had said my name was Harry Ball or I.P. Knightley. Well-trained people keep their comments to themselves, while others conjure up something like, \u201cWell, that\u2019s an easy one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n December 16, 2021<\/a> Writing what you WANT to know.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Some people say, \u201cWrite what you know.\u201d Many people do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fair enough. I get it. Experience informs creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it seems to me that most of us who try to write fiction live in our heads.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n December 08, 2021<\/a> Creative Silences<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The elements of experience move around each other \u2013 aural, visual, kinesthetic and finally verbal \u2013 and, without understanding where it came from, there it is \u2013 a new formulation, a new context, a new thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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