someone to hear your prayers, someone to care

Oh, hey, it’s my 500th post. Wave hello.
In addition to watching surreal TV and a variety of war movies, I’ve also been reading. Specifically: a steady diet of thrillers.
Lee Child: a retired British TV producer who turned his hand to the novel, his first book, Killing Floor, introduced the character of Jack Reacher. [...]

when you laugh and run free with the thought, pull the line in and try to see what you caught

When I’m not reading books or watching movies about Hating America by America Haters that promise to teach me How to Hate America Better*, I’m getting some writing done.
In an ideal week, I stick to the following:Write one hour a night, two nights a week. This produces between 1500-2000 words each night.
Write one or [...]

well yeah, I guess it’s obvious, I also like to write

This post sounded a lot different in its first draft.
This post would have been all about how I want to take part in NaNoWriMo, but I think the concept’s silly*, so I’m going to do my own thing instead. It would have been called MyNoWriMo (get it? because I’m a clever guy. [...]

there’s something in my head, but it’s not me

In light of considering the Chicago move*, I’ve thought a lot about What I Want and What I Need To Get There. What I want is to write. More than anything. I have this vague dream of earning enough as a writer to support myself, but that could take years. And [...]

tuesday’s gone with the wind

When I wrote about the 2009 Muse and the Marketplace conference a few months back, I mentioned Ann Patchett’s keynote speech. Let me give a little more detail there:
Patchett talked about editing the 2006 Best American Short Stories collection. Out of the wealth of material available to her, she had the hardest time [...]

a couple of the sounds that I really like

I bought Michelle B. brunch at Johnny D’s, in payment for her reviewing the first draft of my second novel and giving me feedback. She teaches at a public high school similar to the one my novel’s set at and I needed her help on verisimilitude. I captured the attitude of school kids [...]

just like a paperback novel, the kind the drugstores sell

Here’s what bothers me about sitcoms.
Traditional narrative structure gives us a protagonist who has a desire. Between this protagonist and his desire lies an obstacle. The story depicts how the protagonist gets around this obstacle. In boy meets girl, the boy must convince the girl his feelings are true. In the [...]

every stop I get to, I’m clocking that game

The Footlight Club put up a production of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None in Jamaica Plain this weekend, so I took Sylvia and Katie H. to see it. The play has some limitations compared to the novel – all action takes place in the drawing room of the mansion on Indian Island, [...]

peepshow, creepshow, where did you get those eyes?

Both the professionals I spoke to at Muse and the Marketplace – an agent and an editor – recommended that I read more thrillers to improve my pacing and suspense. So I Kindled James Patterson’s Jack and Jill and read it this past week.
James Patterson: not that great.
Let me give you some examples from [...]

in a way he’s the one who devised the plan

I spent most of this weekend indoors at Grub Street’s annual Muse and the Marketplace conference. Writers take over two floors of the Park Plaza Hotel, networking, taking seminars from some of the best writers out there, and getting manuscript feedback from agents and editors.
My take:
I attended the conference primarily for the Manuscript Mart [...]