Christmas 2014 - Gifts from Writers
Christmas comes but once a year and yet the Christmas spirit can endure throughout the year, given the proper attitude and the right...
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Dec 1, 2014
December 2014 - How to Write Like Yourself
This past summer I was reading a pamphlet-like book, Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov (which I highly recommend). There was no date for the...
Nov 15, 2014
Mid-November 2014 - Hard Times
I’ve not read the novel of that name by Charles Dickens. In fact, I’ve read very little by Dickens. When you are going through hard...
Nov 1, 2014
November 2014 - Screenplays and Novels
I am recalling an online review of the new translation of Dr. Zhivago. The reviewer had seen the 1965 film five times and thus thought...
Oct 1, 2014
October 2014 - Merci and an Apology
J'étais Mademoiselle Tanisse. I was Miss Tanis. The classroom was small, but not too small for a large dark, rectangular, wooden table...
Sep 15, 2014
Mid-September 2014 - Four Pieces of Advice to Young Writers
By using the word, young, in this title, I do not mean of a less mature chronological age. I mean “novice” or “beginning.” In that sense,...
Sep 1, 2014
Mid-October 2014 - Patience and the Palimpsest
One morning at breakfast, Dear Husband read to me a quote from Charles Schulz : “Sometimes I lay awake at night and ask, ‘What have I...
Sep 1, 2014
September 2014 - Sir Walter Scott
Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1771. He was crippled with polio as a boy and, as a result, he had a permanent limp. Also as a...
Aug 15, 2014
Mid-August 2014 - Rocky Raccoon, Jr.
Summertime and the raccoons are coming! They are coming into my detached garage, the nighttime abode for my two cats. The other morning,...
Aug 1, 2014
August 2014 - La Vie est Belle
We live in troubled times. Some of these troubles have been self-produced, others manufactured by people willing to feed off of the fears...
Jul 1, 2014
July 2014 - Marcel Proust
I have attempted several times to read the first volume of seven of À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), the novel by...
Jun 1, 2014
Short Story or Novel?
June 2014 For many years I aspired to be a short story writer. I wrote several short stories and asked friends to read the drafts of...
May 1, 2014
May 2014 - On Greek Tragedy and Modern “Drama”
Perhaps it was because I was born into a Greek tragedy that I somehow managed to avoid reading any of those classic plays. I, however,...
Apr 14, 2014
March 2014 - W. B. Yeats
St. Patrick's Day 2014 During the early spring of 2010 while I was writing the draft of THE DAWN (which was at that time called...
Apr 1, 2014
April 2014 - The Writer Speaks
It is a difficult, demanding hunger - the need to create. One must fill the senses with the sense of exhilaration, even joy, in the...
Feb 1, 2014
February 2014 - Voice of the First Person
W. Somerset Maughham W. Somerset Maugham, William Somerset Maugham, the British doctor-turned-writer, is one of my favorite novelists. He...
Jan 3, 2014
January 2014 - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was a very conservative (in its original meaning), upright Victorian...
Dec 24, 2013
Christmas 2013 - Gifts from Writers
As the year comes to an end and holidays are celebrated, I would like to offer some gifts in a literary vein to anyone who enjoys good...
Dec 1, 2013
December 2013 - Diatribe, Data, and Doctrine Disguised as Fiction
During my many years of study to become a novelist, I encountered these forms of writing that purported to be fiction and were even...
Nov 1, 2013
November 2013 - Louis L’Amour
It was not until I moved West from the East that I learned about Louis L’Amour, and it was a rather chance encounter that informed me of...
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