Competition always makes me more productive. I've written my best stories when they were for contests among friends. I knew if I didn't turn in something good, I wouldn't live it down, so I'd meet the deadline no matter what. By writing enemy I mean someone you want to be better than, someone you want …
Several short sentences about writing, by Verlyn Klinkenborg
I got this as a gift last year, and am finally finishing it now after a long hiatus of distraction. This is unequivocally the best book on writing I've ever read. Each page--each sentence--is a useful insight that most 'how to write' books would stretch out into an entire chapter. It is a joy to …
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Replay, by Ken Grimwood
The worries I wrote about in my previous posts on this did not come to be, and the book ended up being less infuriating than Harry August, but also less interesting. Jeff Winston is living twenty-five years of his life over and over again. Each time he dies of a heart attack at exactly the …
Character questions
What would your character do if approached by a drunk in a bar? Lost in the woods with no food or flashlight? Locked unjustly (or justly) in solitary confinement? If they were told they just swallowed poison? This is an exercise I was just doing recently with my sister, and it's fun and also informative. …
What is the meaning?
More and more I want to write something that has meaning, that has some positive effect on the way people think or act. Shouldn't our creations be more than pretty flashes of light? Shouldn't they say something from within our hearts? Speak something to the world? Don't sacrifice meaning for the sake of entertainment. Entertainment …
Jonas David 