When something feels complex or complicated to you, write it out carefully and thoughtfully, several times if necessary, until it flows smoothly and expresses exactly what you want to communicate and nothing else. 
Inspiration will never, never happen if you don’t work hard at it and don’t consider the act of writing as very nearly the most important thing in your life, right up there next to breath and food and shelter and love.
Tag Archives: writing process
John Barleycorn
And now comes John Barleycorn with the curse he lays upon the imaginative man who is lusty with life and desire to live. John Barleycorn will not let the dreamer dream, the liver live. 
God is bad, truth is a cheat, and life is a joke. From his calm-mad heights, with the certitude of a god, he beholds all life as evil. Wife, children, friends – in the clear white light of his logic, they are exposed as frauds and shams. He sees their frailty, their meagerness, their sordidness, their pitifulness. 
And he knows his one freedom: he may anticipate the day of his death – suicide, quick or slow, a sudden spill or a gradual oozing away through the years, is the price John Barleycorn exacts. 
(From Jack London’s John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs)
Writing in Fear
Anton Chekov said, “Formerly, when I didn’t know that they read my tales and passed judgement on them, I wrote serenely, just the way I eat bilini; now I’m afraid when I write.” 
The fear is not only in craft but also content. My fear is of being attacked from behind, most strongly at a drinking fountain, my teeth smashed into the metal. 
What are my worst moments, my very worst – denying my mother, stealing, hateful, violence, vice upon vice – and what would these crimes look like together, my reel of pettiness and sin? 
And would any of these moments make a good story?
Ray Carver’s Basic Writing Rules
1. Dialogue should be a series of non-sequiturs because “human beings do not really respond to one another.”
2. Any passage that invites underlining must be cancelled.
3. Stories are written in other people’s voices, not the writer’s own.
Transplanting Characters in “Anori”
Fitz is a go-to character in Anori: “To my mind, the philosopher types all died in the Renaissance and that.”
It seemed obvious that he would be a player in a prime scene in the book, something that’s got everything – sex, police chases as well as furious angst. 
However I realized that Uncle Ralph is the one who belongs in the scene; he’s family and makes Dee understand what she will be leaving.
And so, as much as I love the witticisms of Fitz, I had to expunge him from the great chase scene in New York.
He was transported to Greenland instead, where he will watch the ice melt and wax melancholic about the great ships launching into space. 
“Good seein’ ’em go. Now we can have a bit of the peace and quiet.”
Pat’s Vigor/Vigour
Alex and I had almost finished lunch, a long afternoon of meetings and then the evening’s presentation ahead. The door opened abruptly and our senior colleague, Pat, appeared. “Please pardon my intrusion, but I discovered my wallet, reddish-tan, went missing, along with $60-70, four credit cards, my driver’s license, medical cards, and a doctor’s prescription for medication. Lucky me!” He raised his eyebrows, croookedly above his sunken face and dark beady eyes.”Well, if either one you comes across it, please think of me. Do call/text and I will meet you virtually anywhere at your convenience.”
Alex stared back, open-mouthed, the end of his tuna fish sandwich loose between his thumb and forefinger.
“I thank you both, and I must state I truly appreciate the positive course our business venture seems to be piloting, as well as a renewed vigor, v-i-g-o-r or v-i-g-o-u-r. Either one.” Bits of foamy spittle had collected at the corners of his gap-toothed grin. “I feel this both inside and around me.”
Alex put down the sandwich and wiped his hands methodically.
“I am very fortunate to be working with such colleagues.” Pat nodded sharply and backed out of the door, only to reappear like a bristly mole. “Most sincerely.” And he was gone.
“How does that guy still have a job?”
“Not a clue.”
Anori: Inertly Happy in the Book
At the moment, I am in an oddly happy place in my writing. I have another 60-80 pages to go in the first draft of Book One of my science fiction trilogy, Anori. 
I am fairly certain how the book will end – and then leading into the next – and have done the heavy lifting of the narrative to get to this point. I only have to bring the story together with a final series of events that will lead Dee away on her great voyage. And it all seems so clear and whole…and yet I wait and procrastinate the work. Yes, I am a victim of my inertia-loving self. 
But it also seems more than that. There is a feeling that I don’t want to lose, being in something that just might never end, being safe in this eternal-seeming thing.
There is a wide and open road behind me, most of it clear, and then the world ahead, knowing sharp bits, dreaming of them on their own, letting them hover high in my head, not grabbing, tying anything down. It is too final to do that, pointless, leading only to a barren landscape. 
While I know that there is always Book Two – and then the Third – this book, this journey I don’t want to end. I like the edge, broiling up on the crest, anticipating, arching ahead with that, and dream of staying until I can’t take it anymore.
The Trap of Being Free
We were young. We hid and ran. There was a house that was falling down. The back wall had only been partially rebuilt and we climbed over that. It was wonderful and chaotic. 
An old camel lived there. We were told that he was almost 300 years old. He would lay his neck over our small bodies and sleep. We stayed there overnight. And then we realized that we were not allowed to leave. We tried. We posted lookouts and plotted escape, but we were caught and threatened. 
One girl was sexually assaulted and sliced the gaps between her fingers to get them to leave her alone. We felt bad that we didn’t protect her. And then we escaped on a boat. We fished and dragged the camel behind us. It was dead, but the boat went fast. 
It was like a dream, the water deep blue, everything ahead.
To Blog or Not To Blog: Is That Even a Question?
I have drifted from the blog, back to be my former non-blogger state; issues arose, conflicts, work and drink alike. 
I have felt guilty about leaving the blog on its lonesome, a confused guilt of sorts, because I don’t know why I should care about doing it. I don’t and then I do, thinking about things that I might post, some of them vaguely interesting, some not so much. 
And there are moments that I actually enjoy it, the process of making it work most of all, and apparently I’m supposed to be doing this so as I can raise my profile when, one day, my work might be in demand. 
But this virtual platform and the jabbering nonsense that it represents subjects me to doublethink, having to reflect on what is a worthwhile waste of time. 
It’s a meandering, endless thing, and so I’ve had it in the back of my mind that a thousand posts would be something, something irrelevant, but a goal nonetheless. 
Which means I have only 376 to go.
