I have been listening to The Disappeared: A Retrieval Artist Novel, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, because I wanted a sci fi detective story, and so far it is interesting and fairly exciting, but I am finding myself somewhat annoyed by how many POV's it has. I find myself annoyed by the cliff-hangers every time it switches …
Find a writing enemy
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 …
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 