Halloween 2013 - Plot, Character, and Scene
I attended a Writer’s Conference in the early 1990s on the “up and coming plots” for the future, the ideas that a writer needed to focus...
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Oct 11, 2013
Columbus Day 2013 - Buying a New Laptop
The time has come for me to buy a new laptop. I have worn out another keyboard. In addition, the battery of this HP has conked out. I...
Sep 20, 2013
Autumnal Equinox 2013 - Brave Heart
20 September 2013 One weekend during this past summer I took a much needed break from composing the first (and hopefully only) draft of...
Sep 2, 2013
Labor Day 2013 - Blithely Unaware
In the essay entitled “Unplugged,” I stated that I do not recognize the names of most current “actors” and “actresses.” It is indeed...
Sep 1, 2013
September 2013 - On Composing THE DAWN
Sometime during the middle of February 2009, while I was just beginning the draft of what was then named “Nottingham,” Dear Reader sent...
Aug 15, 2013
Mid-August 2013 - Unplugged
It has been en vogue for quite a while for various musicians, especially guitarists, to become “unplugged.” They play their songs that...
Jul 14, 2013
Bastille Day 2013 - The Eiffel Tower
14 July 2013 Guy de Maupassant, the prolific, successful short story writer par excellence, was but one of a sizable number of...
Jun 14, 2013
Flag Day 2013 - Google Knows How I Work
Friends want to know how I work -- what I do to get “the creative juices flowing.” Husband said it might be the subject for an essay. I...
Jun 6, 2013
June 2013 - In Honor of D-Day
This poem by the American poet Robert Frost has long been a favorite of mine. It speaks to a star but could just as easily have been...
May 15, 2013
Mid-May 2013 - The Summer of 2008
I bounce fictional and non-fictional ideas off of my very dear friend through emails, and I have told her that I come up with the best...
May 1, 2013
May 2013 - Falling in Love with a Main Character
It can be a problem, falling in love with a main character. I typically have avoided this pitfall by stepping into another one: feeling...
Apr 1, 2013
April 2013 - The Chicken
I once had a rather hostile relationship with the chicken. I would bake several chicken breasts and then, after they cooled, one of them...
Mar 17, 2013
St. Patrick’s Day 2013 - The Memorandum
When I worked at a federal agency in the 1980s, there was an official memorandum pinned to the cubicle wall of an engineering technician....
Mar 1, 2013
March 2013 - Using the Self as a Source for Characters
I recall vividly this lecture from Professor Claeyssens. Eyes widened; head cocked; nod in my direction; slow, intriguing, deep voice:...
Feb 14, 2013
February 2013 - Incoming Signals
When “Nottingham” was in its earliest stages of being “conceptualized” – the heady moments of characters and their names “coming” to me,...
Jan 1, 2013
January 2013 - The Blank Page
The blank page: it looms before you. For some writers, it is a wave of emptiness that must be dodged quickly, thereby snuffing out the...
Nov 1, 2012
November 2012 - Suffering for One's Art
Spring 2020: The very first essay that I posted on my new website, “Suffering for One’s Art”, remains as true and cogent as ever. ...
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