While I'm forcing my way through The Glass Bead Game to make sure I can add a point to my 'books read this year' score, I'm really enjoying the Crimson Petal and the White. I'm two thirds the way through the 900 page monster, and loving every chapter. It calls me back every time I …
Something to write about
I've been writing a new thing. I'm not even ten thousand words in, but already it has gripped me, and I feel sure I'll follow it to the end, wherever that may be. It's nice to have something to work on every day again. A direction to turn my wandering mind. I feel I will …
Abstruse
I'm still working my way through The Glass Bead Game. 'Working' being the operative word. The author really likes the word 'abstruse' which, I had not heard before and took to be a combination of abstract and obtuse. I wasn't far off. Abstruse:Â difficult to understand; obscure That's pretty much the book in a nutshell, too. …
Cleaning up
I feel like I'm chipping away garbage words in my writing like plaque scrapped from teeth. Often it's been there so long you think its a part of you. I'm making sentences shorter and clearer. Clarity is most important. If the reader can't understand what you are trying to say, then what's the point? How …
Interesting things
True discipline is remembering and recovering--inventing if necessary--what interests you. If it doesn't interest you how could it possibly interest anyone else? ~ Verlyn Klinkenborg Writing is so much more engaging when it's about something the writer is interested in. Notice I said the writer, not the reader. If the writer is interested in what they are writing …
Jonas David 