The Writing Process | The Writing Process
May.17.2010
I've been cooped up all weekend working on revisions, editing and reviews. Outside it was raining. Charcoal-smudged clouds hid the sun and my eyes were all for the page. Words and phrases, spelling and grammar, and a bit of inspiration and imagination along the way to making the current book better...
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May.13.2010
Everyone knows that the key to finishing a novel is to keep writing, to sitting down everyday, fingers to keyboard or pen to paper and moving forth. Don't reread it everyday, don't rewrite it everyday. As a matter of fact, once you start going the book will write itself. You will have no control on...
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Nov.05.2009
Dear Reader,
These days, I find juggling is a useful skill for furthering my career. Filling the blanks left by my publisher's decision to focus on national publicity for "The Sword of Medina" and let me handle the rest could fill all my time. I'm setting up readings and booksignings,...
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Sep.13.2009
WRITE DAMMIT! If anyone other than a writer had written the cliché “The pen is mightier than the sword.” then every writer could take solace in their own heroic literary endeavors. Unfortunately, a writer did write that, so we have to search for inspiration all the more. Let me pose a question. Why...
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Aug.25.2009
School has started and I have 6 units of hard Sociology and Psychology classes. Each requires group work and two research papers. On top of t hat I still must tackle the edits that my editor just sent me yesterday. As I have stated, I need to not look at it for now and start in a week when I...
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Jul.24.2009
6 words, 25 words, 600 words, 130 characters: it all appeals to me.
I'm trying to finish the first draft of a novel. In order to focus on it, I haven't taken on any freelance projects; I'm trying not to start new short stories except to write down what the voices I hear are saying. But it is hard...
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Jul.22.2009
I'm not talking about the courage to set words on paper, what Bukowski called "that small bravery of knowledge"--that's a given. We write. That's what we do. The blank page is nothing to be afraid of.
Hungry mountain lions, brown bears, riot police in Iran, cops on the streets of...
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Jul.21.2009
Before I begin, I want to say I am somewhere in the middle of this discussion, somewhere between the slapping and the slitting of wrists, the throwing of the self onto the pyre of creativity. Both sides are extreme, but interesting to contemplate, at least to me, here, reporting to you from...
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Jul.05.2009
I've just come back from another few days in Wales, and I'll tell you something: I can really write there! Peace and quiet, all the pressures of the normal routine removed, and the mobile internet so slow that I never stay online for longer than I have to. I sat down the first morning to a story...
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May.17.2009
There is a time when your unborn child, your writing, begs to be born. This is the moment when the empty page taunts you and screams at you with the beauty of its lines, or lack thereof. It says, “Fill me with your love, feed me your ideas. Impregnate my paper womb with your love of words that can...
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