“Why are we worn out? “Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? “Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle […]
LIFE WRITING RULES
December 6, 2024 by
Rules for life writing: Get a life. Pay attention. Find a favorable form. Then what?
YOUR STORY: WHERE TO START
June 1, 2024 by
Your story is like every story: waiting to be told. You: But, Blogger Dave I sound dumb when I write it down. Me: What’s dumb sound like. You: It makes me sound like a blogger. Me:
KEEP GRINDING, WRITERS
August 14, 2023 by
“Keep grinding’ is the message all writers tell themselves, but not out loud. Instead, what they say is their word count for the day. Maybe it’s a thousand, maybe more. The message they send is keep grinding.
PEOPLE UNITED BY GIVING WRITERS
June 8, 2023 by
Needy people? You see them all over the place? So do I. I’m one of them. Oh, and so are you. We need things we don’t have. Writers give some of those things, or at least the feeling of giving. So what?
CHEKHOV’S UNLOADED GUN ON THE WALL
May 26, 2022 by
After gun safety class, there’s no such thing as an unloaded gun until you check it out yourself. Check the bolt, the magazine, the barrel, and check it while it’s pointed away from anyone. And away from yourself. Chekhov’s unloaded gun is a different deal.
ONE WRITER: BEGINNING, MIDDLE, END, AND THEN
January 27, 2021 by
One writer works a story out their way, another writer does it their way. Which one gets to the next step in their process; which one starts over again and again? That’s the question that drives the industry of doubt, where one writer looks for the best solution to questions they haven’t asked. And that […]
BIG CITY DICKENS, AND FADING LOVE LIGHTS, A Short Story Of Intimacy
January 19, 2021 by
I got engaged and followed my future across the country. We met while I was an English major nursing a writer’s dream after an Army tour. She graduated and moved home with our wedding plans, so I dropped out and followed. Then she dropped me. Instead of hanging around New Jersey for a second chance, […]
AGING GRACEFULLY? WHAT ARE THE OTHER OPTIONS
July 10, 2020 by
Freud’s Couch Aging gracefully can be a goal. If nothing else, it’s a check-in moment you do for yourself. Some check-in from the couch, some from the bench in a weight room, some not at all. At least that’s what they say. Ask someone their age. If they make a big show out of remembering […]
WRITING THE BOOK I WAS DESTINED TO WRITE
January 24, 2019 by
An English major joke goes like this: I like to write poetry, but I suck at writing poetry. So I wrote a short story that was worse than my poem. To fix the problem I wrote a novel and it’s the worst yet, and this explains the deluge of bad writing.
