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WRESTLING WITH THE DEVIL, A SUN DEVIL, AND WINNING

Great wrestling stories are journeys, internally and externally. From The Odyssey, to Tom Sawyer, to Saving Private Ryan, a journey works to transport readers into the lives and times of those written about. Tonya Russo Hamilton joins the ranks of those who capture time and place and deliver a story flowing with streams of emotion.

DECADE ENDS IN SOFT TALK, HARD TRUTHS

    Me: This decade ends the best of times and worst of times. Them: Did you just make that up, or are you finally going to admit to stealing from Charles Dickens? Me: Writers don’t steal, they borrow. Them: Like the time you borrowed a notebook from Payless in Pony Village?

WRITE A BOOK, IT’LL BE FUN, UNTIL IT’S NOT

Fans, followers, and one-timers on boomerpdx have seen my book writing posts. It’s not exactly how-to-write stuff, but it helps show process. One nice piece of advice I’ve heard: You’d better love your book topic, because you’ll eventually hate it. Since my book is a guided tour of what to expect after a cancer diagnosis, […]

CALIFORNIA JAM FROM 18 TO 62

    What was the hot ticket in 1974? California Jam. Just ask anyone who says they were there.   It was the West Coast Woodstock without the brown acid, Altamont without the murder. Just a nice gathering after all the dust settled and music took a turn.   My wife found her ticket to […]

WHY WRITING? WHY WRITE A CANCER BOOK?

This is gonna be short because I’m writing a cancer book. See what I did there? Didn’t say writing ‘my cancer’ book. Cancer book is more than enough. The whole ‘my cancer’ talk is a bad track. Who really wants to claim it like that. Instead, I’m giving it a good thrashing, plowing the cancer […]

BLOG PLATFORM, WRITER PLATFORM, LAUNCHES MEMOIR

We’ve got a joke, or more accurately my blog efforts get ridiculed, around the keyboard. Goes like this: “Why do you always write about yourself, or put yourself into every post?” I answer by spelling memoir, as in memoir blogger. “M-e … m-o-i-r. You can’t spell memoir without M and E.” Hilarity is supposed to […]

WRITING THE BOOK I WAS DESTINED TO WRITE

    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.

WRITE A BOOK, THEY SAID. IT’LL BE FUN, 2

    What is the goal of writing a book? To get readers to turn the page. Such a modest goal. Should there be any other? I call it a building block, that’s what I call goals. What happens when you achieve your goals, when you have readers turning to the next page. Write another […]

WRITE A BOOK, THEY SAID, IT’LL BE FUN

    Long form writing is like a walk in the woods with no map. In the dark. With animal noises. And cliffs on both sides of the trail. If that isn’t a picture of adventure, what is? And all you need to do is sit down and write. And stay down. For a long […]

SOCIAL MEDIA SUPER STAR IN THE WINGS

    News reports about social media and the ‘new awareness’ we all need to observe will never keep grandma from posting new baby pictures. ButI think I get the point of the warning. From my census training I learned how to gather visual evidence at the door if a citizen didn’t want to interact […]